Ridwan Pasha

Ridwan was the son of Kara Şahin Mustafa Pasha, a Bosnian kapikulu (slave of the Sublime Porte) and later statesman,[1] who served gubernatorial terms in the eyalets (provinces) of Erzurum (1544–1545), Diyarbakir (1548), Yemen (1556–1560) and Egypt (1562/63–1565/66).[2][3] Early in his career, Ridwan was made defterdar (treasurer) of Yemen,[4] after gaining the recommendation of Mahmud Pasha. In the following years, he was assigned sanjak-bey (district governor) of Gaza.[2][4]

In November 1564,[2] after paying a bribe of 50,000 gold pieces,[5] he was appointed beylerbey (governor-general) of Yemen, replacing Mahmud Pasha,[2][4] who bribed the Sublime Porte to gain the governorship of Egypt.[6] According to historian Clive Smith, the large sum that Ridwan Pasha paid for the governorship was attributed to his expectation of accumulating large wealth as governor of the province.[5] His predecessor Mahmud Pasha had governed Yemen for seven years, during which he and his subordinates ruled corruptly, plundering the province's gold and extorting the local inhabitants.[7] Prior to his dismissal, Mahmud Pasha had succeeded in persuading the Sublime Porte to divide Yemen into two separate provinces: Sana'a, which consisted of the interior highlands, and Tihama, which consisted of the province's central and southern coastal plains. According to the 16th-century Arab chronicler al-Nahrawali al-Makki, Mahmud Pasha's motivation was to leave Ridwan Pasha to govern the restive highlands, while virtually appointing a subordinate of his to Tihama with its lucrative Red Sea ports.[8] The Sublime Porte may have agreed to the division out of the belief that a single governor for each of Yemen's two regions would serve to help the Ottomans prevent Portuguese attempts to control Yemeni ports and ensure Ottoman control over the coffee trade, which was primarily cultivated in the highlands.[8]

In 1565, Ridwan Pasha reached a deal with the Sublime Porte in which his trade of Yemeni spices through Jeddah to Egyptian markets would be exempted from taxation in lieu of his annual gubernatorial salary.[5] In this case, "spices" was synonymous with coffee, the trade of which, since the mid-16th century, financed the salaries of the Ottoman garrisons in Yemen. The coffee was grown in areas dominated by the Ismaili (a sect of Shia Muslims) tribes. Ridwan co-opted the chief Ismaili da'i (missionary), giving him and his family several tax farms.[9]

As intended by Mahmud Pasha, the division of Yemen highly restricted Ridwan Pasha's personal financial ambitions because his rule was effectively limited to the fortresses of Sana'a and Saadah, with no control over the Red Sea ports. He thus sought to renegotiate a deal made by his father, Kara Shahin Mustafa (r. 1556–1560), with the Zaydi (a sect of Shia Islam) imam, al-Mutahhar, calling for extending taxation to the Zaidi-dominated northern highlands, where al-Mutahhar ruled virtually autonomously. Al-Mutahhar refused Ridwan Pasha's demands and opened a rebellion against Ottoman authority in 1566.[6][9] By January 1567, all of Sana'a province with the exception of the fortresses of Sana'a and Amran had been conquered by al-Mutahhar's Zaidi tribesmen. Ridwan Pasha then called for a truce with al-Mutahhar, whose forces blocked all the roads to Sana'a to prevent the intervention of a potential Ottoman relief force.[6]

Ridwan Pasha was dismissed from Yemen in April 1567,[2] and was replaced by Hasan Pasha.[10] His dismissal prompted him to head for Constantinople, capital of the empire, to argue his case with the Sublime Porte. He was consequently reprimanded and imprisoned. However, his incarceration was relatively short and he was pardoned in November 1567 when it was discovered that Mahmud Pasha had intercepted and concealed letters from Ridwan Pasha to the Sublime Porte, alerting the imperial authorities of the volatile situation in Yemen; Ottoman authority had largely collapsed in Yemen during Ridwan Pasha's governorship.[2] The concealed letters were discovered after Mahmud Pasha was assassinated in Egypt.[2]

In 1570/71, Ridwan Pasha was reappointed sanjak-bey of Gaza.[2] Ridwan Pasha was then appointed beylerbey of Habesh and Jeddah, which included parts of Abyssinia and Hejaz, in March 1573. He remained in Gaza for a few months after his reassignment to ensure that arrangements he made with the Sublime Porte regarding the transferring of tax revenues or grain harvests from Qasr Ibrim and its territories to Habesh Eyalet from Egypt Eyalet were confirmed. He demanded further concessions from the Sublime Porte to redirect grain harvests from Egypt to the coffers of Habesh's treasury in June 1574.[11] He was dismissed from Habesh in July 1574.[2]

Sometime following his dismissal from Habesh, he served terms as beylerbey of Diyarbakir and then Basra.[4] In 1579, he was a commander in the Ottoman military campaign against the Safavids in the Caucasus Mountains.[2] As a reward for his service,[4] the Sublime Porte appointed Ridwan Pasha to the major eyalet of Anatolia in late 1582 or early 1583.[2][4] He died in office on 2 April 1585.[2] Ridwan Pasha and his brother Bahram Pasha (died 1586), also an Ottoman statesman, were buried in a mausoleum situated in the garden of a mosque in Aleppo.[1][12] The mausoleum was restored in 1924 by Abdullah Bek al-'Ilmi, a descendant of Bahram Pasha.[12] It is unclear why Ridwan Pasha chose to be buried in Aleppo.[1]