Slave soldiers outnumbered Egyptian soldiers two to one in the Sudan

Evidence

Kämil’s outraged protest at this indignity leaves out an important element. As Fawzï’s memoirs show, the menial work required of Egyptian soldiers had previously been performed by Sudanese slaves—either slave soldiers or slaves belonging personally to Egyptian soldiers and officers, as in Fawzï Pasha’s case. In the Sudan during the Turkïya, slaves were often conscripted as soldiers in the army regiments known as the jihädïya. By the 1890s they actually outnumbered the contracted Egyptian soldiers by a ratio of two to one. These slave soldiers were absolutely essential to the maintenance of the military camps, work that presumably included the tasks Kämil so dreaded for Egyptian soldiers. His indignation also echoed with resentment over Egyptians’ loss of authority over the Sudanese themselves, and the consequent shame at occupying the low status once belonging to the Sudanese. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 722

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s Egypt-vs-Sudan coloniality comparison: the menial labor question is really about hierarchy inversion — that Egyptian soldiers’ indignity was the loss of a master-slave role over Sudanese, distinct colonial postures in one army. — connects to: Egyptian soldiers felt the loss of Sudan more personally than other Egyptians did.; Sudan’s conquest made slave trading an organized state function for Egypt; Sudanese slave deaths and Turkish troop distress prompted conscribing Egyptian fellahin (+1 more)
• QUESTION: The jihädïya slave regiments and their two-to-one ratio raise whether Sudan’s colonial labor structure was fundamentally slave-based where Egypt’s was not — a term worth chasing to sharpen the comparative claim.
• DEFINE: Defines jihädïya as Sudanese slave-soldier regiments.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 722

Broader Connections

• Sudanese slave deaths and Turkish troop distress prompted conscribing Egyptian fellahin #corroborates (0.70)
• Sudan’s conquest made slave trading an organized state function for Egypt #complicates (0.50)