Muhammad Sa'id was a son of
Shamdin Agha (d. 1860), a
Kurdish irregular cavalry commander in
Damascus under the
provincial government. They belonged to the Shamdin-Yusuf, the strongest Kurdish clan of 19th-century
Damascus. 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. The mission evidently failed. In 1859, after the irregular garrisons of Damascus were disbanded by government order, Muhammad Sa'id was appointed to a newly-formed Kurdish auxiliary corps. 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. As punishment, the imperial government exiled him to
Mosul. There, he helped bring order to the city and was rewarded by a pardon from the sultan, who allowed him to return to Damascus. He was appointed the
sanjakbey of
Hauran, taking over from another Kurdish officer, Ahmad Yusuf Pasha. 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. He would hold that post for twenty years. ==Wealth and legacy==