Hadim Yusuf Pasha

Hadim Yusuf Pasha, or simply Yusuf Pasha, also Çerkes Ağa Yusuf Paşa, was an Ottoman governor of Baghdad in 1605–1606. Yusuf Pasha was a eunuch and a Circassian by birth. The title "Hadim" literarly means "servant" or "attendant", but its Ottoman connotation in the 16-17th century was "eunuch". Yusuf Pasha was also mentioned as a eunuch by the Portuguese adventurer Teixeira, and this is confirmed by his lack of facial hair and corpulence in the miniatures of Muḥliṣī's travelogue.
Yusuf Pasha occupied various posts, including governor of Van, governor of Baghdad, and muhafız of Üsküdar. In 1608, he was sent to Bursa to suppress a rebellion led by Kalenderoğlu.

Governor of Baghdad

In 1602, Yusuf Pasha was sent from Istanbul to assert an Ottoman presence in the disputed town of Basra, where he held the post of governor despite the presence of a local power-holder named Afrasiyab Paşa. His travel from Istanbul to Basra was documented in his travelogue Sefernāme.
In 1604 Yusuf Pasha was then was dispatched from Basra to Baghdad, to replace the current Baghdad governor Mehmed Pasha, son of Sinan Pasha, and arrived at the end of 1604. Yusuf Pasha was mentioned by Pedro Teixeira, who visited Baghdad in 1604, and who explained that the newly arrived governor came from Basra and was "called Issuf or Iuçef Paşa, a eunuch, and a Xerquez by birth." He also mentioned that the governor recently received the title of vizier.
After Baghdad, Yusuf Pasha became muhafız of Üsküdar. In 1608, he was sent to Bursa to suppress a rebellion led by Kalenderoğlu. A few years later, he is recorded in the retinue of Sultan Ahmed I during a hunting party in Edirne, and is said to have had a household of three hundred members.
Yusuf Pasha died in 1614. His properties and vizierate were transferred to Kalender Pasha, the second treasurer and building supervisor of the "Blue Mosque".

Travelogue from Istanbul to Basra (1602–1603)

Yusuf Pasha is relatively well known through Ottoman accounts and miniatures relating his travels in Anatolia and Iraq, particularly a Sefernāme by an artist named Muhlisi who accompanied him in his travels, and who completed the account in 1605–06 in Baghdad. Yusuf Pasha is especially described as he visited whirling dervishes in Konya, or the shrine of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi and the tombs of Seljuq rulers in the years 1602–1603. In his perigrinations and military conflicts during his tenure in Baghdad, he is described as valorous, just, and pious leader, acting under difficult circumstances.
Among the Ottoman governors of Baghdad, only Sokulluzade Hasan Pasha is also known to have commissioned illustrated manuscripts, which were significantly more ambitious and rather belonged to the genre of universal histories.