Kirbach

Kurbash, also known as Kourbash or Kurbaj (Arabic: كرباج qurbāj‎‎, from Turkish: kırbaç, "a whip" ), is a whip or strap about a yard in length, made of the hide of the hippopotamus or rhinoceros. It is an instrument of punishment and torture that was used in the Ottoman Empire, most especially in Egypt. It was a tool widely employed by officials for various purposes of the state, including the obtaining of confessions from criminals, the collection of taxes, and the enforcement upon the population of the form of servitude known as corvée labor.

In Egypt, the kurbash was already in use during the periods of Ottoman and Mamluk control. Its use did not diminish once these powers were removed, however, as their overthrow and the subsequent reign of Mehmet Ali (r.1805-1848) was also characterized by widespread use of the whip. During his reign, Mehmet Ali bolstered his project of Egyptian reform with massive public works projects, largely realized through the use of corvée labor. Those enlisted in this corvée were peasants known as the fellahin, and were uprooted from their lands and forced to labor as a part of work gangs. In the interest of maintaining agricultural productivity and increasing state revebye, it was a common practice for foremen to enforce this type of labor by applying whip on the fellahin. The use of the kurbash upon the fellahin was also codified in the Qanun al-Filaha, a set of codes created in the 1830s that dealt with offenses that largely concerned peasants. Within its fifty-five articles dealing with offenses related to land cultivation, damages to public property, and offenses by public employees, twenty-six articles prescribe the use of the kurbash.

The kurbash was additionally applied on those who were not peasants or corvée laborers. Under Mehmet Ali's rule, procedure surrounding the military was largely built within the context of his larger schedule of reform for Egypt. As such, the military under Muhammad Ali sought to train and discipline its soldiers through the use of methods of internment, surveillance and corporal punishment. As such, the whip was largely employed against soldiers for the purpose of creating discipline within the military. In 1825, when leading an official French training mission in Egypt, General Pierre Boyer noted that soldiers who were insubordinate would face five hundred strokes of the kurbash, while those who attempted desertion would receive one thousand strokes. Other such accounts of the military at the time list the whip being applied for various discrepancies of soldiers, from losing water buckets to stealing apricots from a market. The use of the kurbash in this way was intended to not only discipline the soldier receiving the punishment, but also enforce obedience on the rest of the soldiers: whippings took place in front of the punished soldier's battalion so that his fellow soldiers were to watch.

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