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.
[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.
[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.
[2] Ridwan Pasha was then appointed beylerbey of Habesh and Jeddah, which included parts of Abyssinia and Hejaz, in March 1573.
He demanded further concessions from the Sublime Porte to redirect grain harvests from Egypt to the coffers of Habesh's treasury in June 1574.
[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.