[1] He served as grand vizier for nine years in total, seven times during the reign of Abdul Hamid II and twice during the Second Constitutional Monarchy.

He returned to Erzurum for his first civil service assignment in 1853 where he worked in the eyalet's bureau of commutations (tahrirat kalemi).

[5] Mehmed Said contributed to the provincial reform by writing the Regulation on the General Administration of Provinces (İdare-i Umumiye-i Vilayet Nizamnamesini).

In 1881, France declared Tunisia a French colony a brief military campaign while in Egypt Urabi Pasha lost his nationalist struggle against the Europeans.

Due to these events, Mehmed Said Pasha did not succeed in measures to reduce state debts and provide stability.

However, he wanted to suppress the Bulgarian nationalist revolt that broke out in Eastern Rumelia, but Sultan Abdul Hamid thought that these troops could use them against him, so he vetoed the operation.

Two months later the took refuge at the British embassy in Constantinople, and, though then assured of his personal liberty and safety, remained practically under house arrest with his son for six years.

[8] After two years in this post, he had a disagreement with the War Minister Mehmed Rıza Pasha about the problems in the Rumelian army.

For this reason, he resigned on 6 August 1908, after two weeks of vizierate, citing the Sultan's interference in the cabinet list, and he was replaced by the more liberal Kâmil Pasha,[1] at the insistence of the Young Turks.

Also during 1908, Mehmed Said Pasha bought the famed Istanbul arcade in the Beyoğlu district, today known as Çiçek Pasajı ("Flower Passage").

[9] Following the resignation of Ibrahim Hakkı Pasha in the wake of Italy's declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in 1911, he was again called to the premiership.

His time as Grand Vizier was under the de facto rule of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and the War Minister Mahmut Şevket Pasha.

In the "election of clubs" held in February 1912, he allowed the CUP to seize the parliament through egregious voter fraud and intimidation.

However, with Şevket Pasha's departure from government and another Albanian revolt, a military clique known as the Savior Officers who backed the defeated Freedom and Accord Party forced him to resign from the grand viziership for the last time.