ABSTRACT
A large proportion of the foreign immigrants to Alexandria spent the rest of their lives in the city as did their descendants. A cosmopolitan Alexandria emerged around 1850 and virtually disappeared in the 1960s. There were attempts to relate the cosmopolitan Alexandria of the 1920s and 1930s to the glorious Greco-Roman past of the city. The ambiguity of the Alexandrian identity resides perhaps in this feeling that otherness was its true nature but that true otherness was not attainable. The chapter describes various groups of non-Egyptian residents in Egypt. The first group consists of foreigners - few in number - who managed to integrate very early on and became accepted as Egyptians. The second group consists of non-Egyptians who opted for Egyptian nationality in the 1920s. The third group consists of khawagas of Ottoman origin who had managed to obtain protection, or a passport, from a European power.
