kurbash

“To meet the expenses of the great wars on which he was constantly engaged he had to impose taxation which, even if levied by more regular methods, was almost as crushing as the unregulated spoliation under the Mamelukes, and gradually his Mudirs and Mamours and Omdehs had to have recourse to the same methods as the revenue-farmers in the Mameluke days to screw the last piastre out of the helpless fellaheen, whilst recruitment for the armies which demanded incessant reinforcements became an even worse terror than the kurbash of the tax collector and the interminable corvées.”

The Egyptian Problem