ABSTRACT
The rise in property values occasioned bitter disputes over the ownership of land and, in particular, the fiscal status of land owned by foreigners. The Egyptian administration clearly felt that the right to own land entailed the obligation to pay local taxes, as was the case elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, and as had been spelled out in the sultan's decree of 1856 that had finally opened the way for the foreign purchase of land. The settlement of well-to-do foreign residents and proteges with their families gave them a material interest in the city's general, long-term development. Their interest in land and house-property meant that they could not contemplate with indifference any efforts to eject them or to alter their privileged status. The growth of Alexandria led, in the first instance, to an intensified use of space on the peninsula, where the population of the Turkish town had been concentrated since the seventeenth century.
