Only 15 percent of Sudan-harvested slaves survived to join the Egyptian army

Evidence

After settling these questions pertaining to the structural organization of the army and the composition of the officer corps Mehmed Ali still had one major problem to contend with, namely, the performance of the Sudanese troops. The Sudan campaign had so far yielded mixed results. While Ismail Pasha, and later Mehmed Bey Defterdar, were able to gather a significant number of slaves and send them to Egypt, a lot of them either perished on the way or proved incapable of bearing arms. Out of 20,000 slaves gathered between 1820 and 1824 only 3,000 remained alive in 1824. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 453

Categorization

• SHARE: Stark mortality figure — 17,000 of 20,000 slaves dead or unfit in four years — worth sending to anyone interested in African military recruitment or abolition history.