The Mahmudiyya canal killed between 12,000 and 100,000 laborers

Evidence

Although contemporary reports stress the appallingly high rate of casualties (estimates range from 12,000 to 100,000) and the highly improvised manner in which the canal was excavated, still, the sheer size of the labor force involved as well as the cost and duration of the project testify to the ability of the Pasha’s administration in Cairo to tap and control the human and material resources of his province. By the early 1820s, then, the Pasha had managed to undertake what every Ottoman governor before him for the previous three centuries had tried but failed to do, namely, to organize the economy of the province of Egypt and to reap its considerable potential wealth. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 41