The Egyptian army coerced conscripts for the Pasha’s dynastic wars

Evidence

This book, then, is not a biography of Mehmed Ali; it does not follow him from the time he arrived in Egypt in 1801 till his death nearly half a century later, tracing his wonderful deeds; nor does it give an account of this long period as if seen from his perspective. Rather, its subject is the army he founded and the men who fought in it. Instead of looking at the army as the national institution that gave those conscripts the “right” to bear arms and to defend their nation, or of writing its history in a manner that the Pasha himself would have liked, this book sees it as an institution of power that forced these tens of thousands of men to carry arms and to fight for Mehmed Ali and his family, and in the process changed the nature of Egyptian society and affected the lives of the men who served in it. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 20