 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 revenue, it was a common practice for foremen to enforce this type of labor by applying whip on the fellahin.