Mehmed Rashid Pasha (, ; 1824–15 June 1876) was an Ottoman statesman who served as the vali (governor) of Syria Vilayet in 1866–1871 and as minister of foreign affairs of the Ottoman government in 1873–1874 and again from 1875 until his death. 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. There he became a protege of the Grand Vizier Ali Pasha, a key figure in the empire-wide Tanzimat reforms. 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.
As governor, Rashid Pasha enacted numerous administrative reforms, including the creation of the Damascus and Beirut municipal councils, the Syrian provincial council and the Syrian parliament, while ensuring that the office of amir al-hajj (commander of the annual Hajj caravan) was only filled by a local. He launched numerous public works projects, significantly expanding Syria's road and telegraph networks. He also sought to bring order to Syria's chaotic land ownership laws and encouraged private purchases of state-owned land, which ultimately benefited the urban elite to the detriment of the peasantry. 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.
Concurrent with Ali Pasha's dismissal as grand vizier in 1871, Rashid Pasha was dismissed from the governorship of Syria. Two years later he was appointed minister of planning before a cabinet reshuffle that same year made him minister of foreign affairs. He was replaced in May 1874 and sent to Vienna as the Ottoman ambassador to Austria-Hungary. However, he was reappointed minister of foreign affairs in November 1875. Rashid Pasha continued in this office until he was gunned down by Hasan Bey, a disgruntled officer, during a cabinet meeting in the home of Midhat Pasha. Hassan's target was the minister of war, Huseyin Avni Pasha, who was also killed.
Early life and career
Rashid Pasha was born and raised in Egypt in 1824. His father, Hasan Haydar Pasha, was an ethnic Turk from Drama in Macedonia, who served in the court of the powerful vali (governor), Muhammad Ali. In 1844, Rashid was sent to study in Paris as part of an annual education mission from Egypt to France. In 1849 Rashid returned to Egypt after completing his education and two years later followed his father and other Turkish Egyptian officials to the Ottoman capital in Istanbul.
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. The command of Arabic and French he developed during his youth in Egypt and France had been "key to his advancement" according to the historian Leila Hudson. Rashid entered the imperial service and over the years served various provincial posts. Like Mehmed Ali Pasha, Rashid had spent part of his career in the Translation Bureau of the Foreign Ministry.
According to the historian Butrus Abu-Manneh, Rashid Pasha was appointed the governor of the Izmir-centered Smyrna Vilayet at the relatively young age of 40. However, he is mentioned as governor of Smyrna as early as 1862. During that year he inaugurated a train station in the town of Aysalok along the railway opened between Aidin and Izmir. The station paved the way for Aysalok's transformation into a resort town.
Governor of Syria
In the early summer of 1866, a power shuffle in the Sublime Porte (Ottoman central government), resulted in the reappointment of Rashid Pasha's mentor Mehmed Ali Pasha as grand vizier; Mehmed Ali Pasha had been appointed and dismissed from the grand vizierate in 1852, 1855–1856, 1858–1859 and 1861. Meanwhile, in Syria Vilayet, a province centered in Damascus, Governor As'ad Mukhlis Pasha canceled the province's grain supply contracts with European merchants and their associated local contractors and ordered the grain harvests to be redirected to state warehouses; grain was the major cash crop of Syria. Incensed, the European consuls demanded that As'ad Mukhklis Pasha be dismissed. In August 1866, Mehmed Ali Pasha affirmed and appointed Rashid Pasha valī of Syria.
Reorganization and reforms The Syria Vilayet was formed in 1865, combining the eyalets of Damascus and Sidon. The province extended from Tripoli and Hama in the north to Palestine and Transjordan in the south, but excluded the autonomous Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate. According to the historian John Spagnolo, Rashid Pasha was "intent on reinvigorating the Ottoman Empire" and was "as efficient and imaginative in the exercise of his functions as the prevailing state of the Empire permitted", while Abu-Manneh noted that he "worked indefatigably for the integration of the provinces". By 1868, Syria was administratively divided into the eight sanjaks (first-level districts) of Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Tripoli, Acre, Hama, Hauran and Nablus.
Rashid Pasha established a new municipal council in Damascus and a new administrative council for the province. To elicit local support for the reorganized administration, several Damascene notables were given posts in the councils or other provincial posts. He reformed the office of amir al-hajj (commander of the annual Hajj caravan to Mecca), increasing the post's salary and ensuring that only locals were appointed to the office. Notables from Beirut (former capital of Sidon Eyalet), the city of Sidon and the subdistricts of Rashaya, Hasbaya and the eastern Beqaa Valley lodged complaints to the Sublime Porte in October 1867 alleging that their interests were being neglected by the administration in Damascus. The petitions were penned by former employees of Daud Pasha, the governor of Mount Lebanon, who strove to annex the areas to his governorship and may have played a role in the petitions. Rashid Pasha subsequently visited Sidon to hear local grievances and replace the city's qaimmaqam (governor of a qadaa or 'second-level district'). 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. In 1868 he authorized the establishment of the Beirut Municipal Council.
In line with the 1858 Land Code, large state-owned tracts in the Hauran plain and the Beqaa Valley were put up for auction. Rashid Pasha encouraged private investment in land and sought to speedily register deeds to bring order to the chaotic state of land ownership in Syria. In his pursuit of these goals, he often supported the interests of wealthy businessmen from the major cities against the interests of the peasantry. In general, many of the urban businessmen Rashid Pasha courted lacked adequate capital for mass land acquisition during his term, and investments in land did not accelerate until the trade depression and rural hardships of the 1870s, after he left office.
Public works
Rashid Pasha launched a campaign to upgrade Syria's infrastructure. Through the Damascus Administrative Council, these projects were commenced to facilitate access to the city's rural hinterland and encourage the expansion of agriculture. 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. Inland-to-coastal roads that connected Homs and Tripoli, Nablus and Sidon, Tibnin and Tyre, and Suq al-Khan and Acre were built as well. A carriage road between Damascus and Palestine was also opened to ease overland trade with Egypt. Furthermore, the existing Jerusalem–Nablus route and the coastal routes that connected Gaza to Jaffa and Beirut with Sidon were repaired. Rashid Pasha attempted to build a road through the Syrian Desert connecting Damascus with Baghdad, but the project fell through.
A major expansion of the telegraph network in Syria was initiated by Rashid Pasha and telegraph offices were set up in all of the province's major towns. He also directed that European languages were able to be transmitted through the network in addition to Turkish. The 19th-century Syrian historian Muhammad Husni asserts that Rashid Pasha was infatuated with the telegraph, spending hours in the telegraph office sending and receiving messages. During Rashid Pasha's rule, Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri and other prominent Damascenes lobbied the British consul of Damascus, Richard Burton, to gain British financial backing for a large railroad network in Syria.
Promotion of education and literature The Nahda (Arabic literary renaissance) in Syria dates to Rashid Pasha's governorship. According to Hudson, Rashid Pasha, as a modernist, took a "personal interest in spreading literacy and in building an educational infrastructure." Primary schools were founded in Damascus, Beirut and Jerusalem with his support. Under his governorship, a provincial newspaper, Suriyya, and provincial salnamas (yearbooks) were first published, while private literary journals also began to circulate. In 1868 he authorized the reestablishment of the Syrian Scientific Society, a group composed of Syrian entrepreneurs and patrons of literature and the arts.
Centralizing the hinterlands Rashid Pasha viewed a prominent military presence as key to the success of his infrastructural, administrative and educational initiatives. One of his key policies was extending actual administrative rule and law enforcement to Syria's hinterlands. To that end, he launched campaigns to suppress the Bedouin tribes of the desert fringes. Bedouin mobility and depredations against agricultural settlements were the main cause of instability in the Syrian countryside and fostered brigandage. Concerted efforts against the Bedouin began in 1863 under Governor Fuad Pasha, entailing a military campaign by a newly conscripted army of urban Syrians equipped with modern rifles from the Crimean War and new fortifications between the settled countryside and the Syrian Desert.
Northern and central Syria