[1] In March 1844, the Damascus Provincial Council appointed Muhammad Sa'id to command an expedition to Jabal Ajlun, a mountainous region in the province's hinterland where government authority was weak.
The purpose of the expedition was to assert government rule and secure the administrative center of Irbid against the Bedouin tribes, which wielded more influence in the district and historically imposed their own taxes on the inhabitants.
During the 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus, Muhammad Sa'id failed to prevent his Kurdish irregulars from joining in a wide-scale massacre of Christians in the city's Bab Tuma quarter.
He soon after replaced Ahmad's brother Muhammad Yusuf Pasha as amir al-hajj (commander of the annual Hajj pilgrim caravan to Mecca), beginning in the late 1860s.
[3] Muhammad accumulated significant wealth in his capacity as amir al-hajj and invested considerable sums acquiring numerous villages and farms in the Ghouta oasis of Damascus, which became part of a Shamdin family endowment, and several tracts in the Hauran plains and the Golan Heights area.