Ridwan Pasha

Ridwan ibn Mustafa Pasha
Beylerbey of Anatolia
In office 1582/83 – 2 April 1585
Monarch	Murad III
Beylerbey of Habesh
In office March 1573 – July 1574
Monarch	Selim II
Beylerbey of Yemen
In office November 1564 – April 1567
Monarch	Selim II
Preceded by	Mahmud Pasha
Succeeded by	Hasan Pasha
Sanjak-bey of Gaza
In office 1570/71 – March 1573
Monarch	Selim II
Succeeded by	Ahmad ibn Ridwan
In office Early 1560s – November 1564
Monarch	Suleiman I
Personal details
Died	2 April 1585 Anatolia
Relations	Ridwan dynasty
Military service
Allegiance	Ottoman Empire

Riḍwān ibn Muṣṭafā ibn ʿAbd al-Muʿīn Pasha (Turkish transliteration: Ridvan Pasha; died 2 April 1585) was a 16th-century Ottoman statesman. He served terms as governor of Gaza in the early 1560s and in 1570–1573, Yemen in 1564/65–1567, Habesh and Jeddah in 1573–1574 and Anatolia in 1582/83 until his death. During his term in Yemen, Ottoman authority largely collapsed. Ridwan Pasha was the progenitor of the Ridwan dynasty, which chose Gaza as its family headquarters, and where members of the dynasty ruled almost consecutively until 1690.

Ridwan was the son of Kara Şahin Mustafa Pasha, a Bosnian kapikulu (slave of the Sublime Porte) and later statesman, who served gubernatorial terms in the eyalets (provinces) of Erzurum (1544–1545), Diyarbakir (1548), Yemen (1556–1560) and Egypt (1562/63–1565/66). Early in his career, Ridwan was made defterdar (treasurer) of Yemen, after gaining the recommendation of Mahmud Pasha. In the following years, he was assigned sanjak-bey (district governor) of Gaza.

In November 1564, after paying a bribe of 50,000 gold pieces, he was appointed beylerbey (governor-general) of Yemen, replacing Mahmud Pasha, who bribed the Sublime Porte to gain the governorship of Egypt. According to historian Clive Smith, the large sum that Ridwan Pasha paid for the governorship was attributed to his expectation of accumulating large wealth as governor of the province. 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. Prior to his dismissal, Mahmud Pasha had succeeded in persuading the Sublime Porte to divide Yemen into two separate provinces: Sana'a, which consisted of the interior highlands, and Tihama, which consisted of the province's central and southern coastal plains. According to the 16th-century Arab chronicler al-Nahrawali al-Makki, Mahmud Pasha's motivation was to leave Ridwan Pasha to govern the restive highlands, while virtually appointing a subordinate of his to Tihama with its lucrative Red Sea ports. The Sublime Porte may have agreed to the division out of the belief that a single governor for each of Yemen's two regions would serve to help the Ottomans prevent Portuguese attempts to control Yemeni ports and ensure Ottoman control over the coffee trade, which was primarily cultivated in the highlands.

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