ABSTRACT
Alexandria's rapid growth, in population and in importance to the government, impelled the adoption of reforms and innovations in the inherited structure of urban administration. The government extended its oversight to new fields of activity, such as monitoring public health, regulating construction, and establishing new tribunals, as well as exercising its traditional prerogatives to collect taxes and suppress public disorder. The long-range result was to deprive Cairo of its primacy, Alexandria of its autonomy, and officials and notables in both places of much of their independent authority and influence. The khedive and his family had interests that dovetailed with those of the Ornato's foreign progenitors. The Ornato Commission's work shows no trace of a preservationist ideology. The muhafiz of Alexandria executed the sentence of the council by clapping the offender in prison. The problems of the mixed commercial tribunal point to the much bigger problem of the legal status of foreigners in Alexandria.
