Chancery secretary (katib)

The katib was the chancery official who wrote, copied and kept letters, decrees, registers and accounts. The kinds multiplied with the chanceries: the scribe of letters (inshâ), the scribe of revenue, the scribe of the army, and the scribe of the judge. In the Ottoman state a katib rose from apprentice (shakird) to halife. ¹

The entry says that writing down the revelation was one of the main tasks of scribes in early Islam, and that the Prophet appointed scribes for his letters to rulers. Among them were Zayd ibn Thabit (may God be pleased with him), who learned Syriac and Hebrew for the purpose, and Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman (may God be pleased with him), who was his secret scribe. The sources give between twenty-three and forty-two scribes. ¹

Under the caliphs each had his own scribe. Abu Bakr sent Hudhayfa and Uthman ibn Hunayf (may God be pleased with him) as scribes for the land tax in Sawad. Umar set up the registers, and had some scribes record Muslims in the diwan by tribe. Under Uthman, people criticised the appointment of Marwan ibn al-Hakam as scribe. ¹

Muawiya set up the chancery of letters (Diwan al-Rasail) as an institution, and its scribes were men of letters who knew the order of rank in the state. There were at least five kinds of scribe: letters, tax, army, security and the courts, and the scribes of letters were the most senior. Most came from the provinces where they served, but the Umayyads preferred their own kin. ¹

Nasr ibn Asim led a committee of scribes that completed the vowelling and pointing of the Qur'an under Hajjaj. The Umayyad style was plain and official. In the Abbasid period rhymed prose entered it. ¹

The Abbasids kept the Umayyad chanceries and added more. Scribes were classed by their work: tax, letters, judge, army, police and public order, and the stipends. In the early centuries scribes were paid monthly, from ten to forty dinars according to rank, and in the ninth century a scribe able to answer letters alone earned about forty dinars a month. Scribes formed a closed class that controlled administration, and they were tied to the vizierate. ¹

Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahya, secretary to the Umayyad caliph Marwan II, wrote a treatise on the scribe's craft. Ibn Qutayba wrote Adab al-katib to prepare men for service. Manuals of chancery art and rhymed prose were many. ¹

Fatimid scribes worked under the head of the chancery of composition (Diwan al-Insha), ranked below the viziers, and often held the vizierate when there was none. In the Mamluk state the scribes of the chancery were headed by the secretary of the sultan (katib al-sirr) from the fourteenth century, and they had a uniform or a mark of their rank. ¹

Turkish states used the terms bitikçi and ılımga for the scribes, and the Seljuks called the head of their scribes melik al-kuttab. The Mongols called the chief scribe uluğ bitikçi. Under the Safavids scribes held ranks according to their chancery. ¹

The earliest information on Ottoman scribes goes back to the reign of Orhan. The three main central offices were the imperial council, the treasury (defterdarlık) and the registry (defterhâne). From the first half of the seventeenth century the scribes of the treasury were called halife, and had an internal ladder: when the chief scribe died or left, the next was appointed. In the mid-seventeenth century a new bureaucracy formed at the Bab-i Ali, and the offices of the grand vizier's secretary and the chancery of letters came to employ many halifes. The janissaries, the sipahis, the shaykh al-islam and the kazasker each had their own scribes. ¹

Clever boys of about eight or ten were taken as apprentices (shakird) into an office, where a senior scribe taught them writing, composition, accounts and registers. An apprentice was not made to write until he could do so well, and he carried the registers and papers. When he could write, he was given a pen-name (mahlas) to use in what he wrote. Entry needed a recommendation from the head of the pen (kalem âmiri) or a senior official, or a petition. From the Tanzimat the schools of the Judicial Academy and the Literary Sciences replaced this training. ¹

Scribes of the treasury and the imperial council usually held a timar of about 30,000 akçe. A fermán at the start of the seventeenth century set a ceiling of 40,000, and it was exceeded later. Paid scribes received a daily wage (ulufe) every three months, according to their service. They charged fees for papers (kalem harçları) to the parties, and the surplus went into a common fund (orta akçesi) shared among the staff. Some received a yearly salary (sâlyâne) of one to three thousand akçe. ¹

Orders were repeated to stop lateness. In 1777 scribes were told to come at the first hour of the call to prayer and leave between half past ten and eleven. They were to wear the scribe's dress and headgear, so that clients could tell them apart. Abuses included forging papers and delaying business for money, and the punishments went from dismissal to exile and execution. ¹

• TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, "KÂTİP", vol. 25: first part (Mustafa Sabri Küçükaşcı), pp. 49–52; Ottoman part (Erhan Afyoncu and Recep Ahıshalı), pp. 53–55. ²