Village officials colluded with conscription fugitives despite execution threats

Evidence

It appears, however, that even the nāirs were not fulfilling this task properly and some of them would not report on the fugitives found in their departments. In the case of a nāir being found to harbor fugitives in his department it was decided that he would receive 100 stripes of the bastinado as well as being imprisoned for life in Abū Qīr. In spite of all these regulations to curb the desertion of the peasants from their villages, the phenomenon continued and the village shaykhs on whom the responsibility of catching fugitives squarely rested proved unreliable. Their role was thus reduced to simply reporting the presence of the fugitives rather than capturing them. Article 118 of al-Qānūn al-Muntakhab passed in February 1844 stipulated that the village shaykhs should search for the fugitives in their villages and instead of catching them themselves, as the earlier law had stipulated, they were now asked to report to the mudīr of the district. If four days had passed since the fugitive had left his village without being found, and if during that time the shaykh failed to report him, the shaykh would then be considered an accomplice of the fugitive, and in this case he would be hanged. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 473