Rashid Pasha was raised in Egypt where his father was an aide of the governor Muhammad Ali and was educated in Paris before joining government service in Istanbul in 1851.

After the latter was reappointed grand vizier in 1866, Rashid Pasha was appointed governor of the Damascus-centered Syria Vilayet which extended from Tripoli and Hama in the north to Palestine and Transjordan in the south.

His main goal was to integrate Syria and its hinterland firmly into the Ottoman state after a long period of virtual autonomy and imperial neglect.

To that end, he launched military campaigns in the Alawite-dominated coastal range, the central Syrian steppe and the southern Hauran and Balqa plains, all rural regions that long resisted Ottoman taxation and conscription.

Unlike his predecessors, however, Rashid Pasha ultimately achieved the cooperation of the mutually hostile Muslim plainsmen, Druze mountaineers and Bedouin tribesmen by equitably distributing resources and duties among them while maintaining a strong military presence.

He viewed his strategy as necessary for the prosperity of the region and joint resistance against increasing European commercial encroachments in the lucrative Syrian grain trade.

[1][2][3] His father, Hasan Haydar Pasha,[4] was an ethnic Turk from Drama in Macedonia,[1] who served in the court of the powerful vali (governor), Muhammad Ali.

[1] In Istanbul, Rashid became a protege of Grand Vizier Mehmed Ali Pasha, a reformist Ottoman statesman involved with the establishment of the empire-wide Tanzimat reforms.

[5] By 1868, Syria was administratively divided into the eight sanjaks (first-level districts) of Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Tripoli, Acre, Hama, Hauran and Nablus.

[15] Rashid Pasha subsequently visited Sidon to hear local grievances and replace the city's qaimmaqam (governor of a qadaa or 'second-level district').

[16] Rashid Pasha oversaw the first Syrian parliament (Majlis Suriye) in Beirut in December 1867 or January 1868, during which four representatives (two Muslims and two non-Muslims) from each sanjak convened to discuss new commercial and infrastructural projects and administrative reforms.

[14] In 1868, a resolution was passed by the parliament approving the construction of a carriage road from the northern town of Ma'arra, southward through Hama, Homs, Baalbek and Anjar to connect with the Beirut–Damascus highway.

[22] Two months into his term, Rashid Pasha made campaign preparations against the Alawite clans in the coastal mountains east of Latakia and Tripoli, mainly for evading conscription.

In 1867, the Alawite mountaineers used the diversion of imperial troops from Syria to Crete, where a rebellion was raised against the Ottomans, as an opportunity to raid neighboring villages.

The British consul in Damascus, Richard Wood, wrote that Rashid Pasha's efforts sought to instill in the province's inhabitants "a sense of community of material, social, and political interests—a national spirit, in fact, of which the government will be regarded as the highest expression".

[25] In December 1866, Rashid Pasha met the powerful Druze sheikh Ismail al-Atrash in Damascus and appointed him mudir (subdistrict governor) of Jabal al-Druze, the mountainous area of the eastern Hauran.

[26] He also allocated adequate grazing lands for the flocks of the Bedouin Ruwallah and Wuld Ali tribes, both major rivals of the Druze clans and the Hauran peasantry.

[27] In 1867, Rashid Pasha oversaw plans to assert state control over the Balqa,[14] a region of Transjordan extending between Wadi Mujib in the south to the Zarqa River in the north.

The peasantry cultivated the Balqa's plains through extortionate protection agreements, known as khuwwa, with the Bedouin tribes in which the latter would receive a share of the harvest in return for not disturbing the peasants.

[28] Rashid Pasha sought to end this traditional arrangement and obtain tax arrears, set up an administrative body over the region and force the Bedouin tribes (the Adwan, Sardiyah, Bani Sakhr and Sirhan) to submit to state authority.

In al-Salt, Rashid Pasha established the qadaa of Balqa with an elected council of local notables headed by an appointed Kurdish qaimmaqam from Damascus, Faris Agha Kudru.

[32] In the summer of 1869, the Adwan and Bani Sakhr, traditional rivals, joined forces to challenge Rashid Pasha's assertion of state rule.

They raided the village of al-Ramtha in Hauran, prompting Rashid Pasha to launch a large-scale campaign against them out of concern that a lesser response to the Bedouin affront to state authority would threaten his administrative reforms in the Syrian hinterlands.

The fifteen soldiers sent to enforce the order were killed by Tiyaha tribesmen upon arrival, prompting Rashid Pasha to send a punitive expedition against the tribe, which seized its entire sheep flocks and camel herds and sold them to the peasantry in Jerusalem.

Rashid Pasha advocated an official protest against the Dutch government and imperial honor for the Sultan of Aceh Alauddin Mahmud Syah II.

[45] In July Rashid Pasha obtained documents signed by the Sultan of Aceh and his deputies submitting the country to Ottoman sovereignty and calling for a governor to be appointed by the Sublime Porte.

The British ambassador to Istanbul petitioned the Sublime Porte to force the Yemen governor's troops to withdraw and informed Rashid Pasha that Britain maintained a treaty with the south Arabian sultanates and objected to Ottoman interference.

[47] In a compromise proposal, on 26 January 1874, Rashid Pasha communicated to the British that the Sublime Porte would "not compromise [its] sovereignty over Lahj but would not interfere with treaty obligations between the shaykhs and others" and that the presence of imperial Ottoman troops in Yemen was "by right" as "Arabia is the cradle of Islam; the Sultan is the Prophet's khalifah; he has rights and obligations vis-a-vis the Holy Cities [Mecca and Medina]".

[48] On 12 May 1874 Rashid Pasha made a formal request to the British to terminate protection of an undefined number of Ashkenazi Jews in Syria and Palestine.

Per capitulations treaties with the Sublime Porte, European governments could use force if their citizens or protégés were harmed, though in practice, consular warnings to local officials proved sufficient.