Village shaykhs helped peasants evade conscription by force

Evidence

Controlling the absconders, however, proved to be more difficult than initially imagined. A large number of the village shaykhs connived with the peasants instead of handing them to the authorities, and in some cases the shaykhs were accepting bribes from the fugitives in order not to turn them in. Article 36 of Qānūn al-Filāḥa which was passed in early 1830 stipulated that any such shaykh, if found guilty, would receive 200 stripes of the whip (kurbāj). — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 410

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels James C. Scott’s weapons-of-the-weak theme of local elites shielding communities from state extraction.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 410