Job title
Muhimme Kalemi Basmemuru
Group of job titles: Correspondence and registry
2 officials held the job title Muhimme Kalemi Basmemuru. Its 4 annual entries run from 1880 to 1907 (AH 1298 to 1324). The median of the 4 recorded monthly salaries is 675 kuruş, against 487.5 kuruş for the whole collection in the same years. The entries name 1 place, Istanbul.
- Officials
- 2
- Years on recordAH 1298 to 1324, 4 years with an entry
- 1880 to 1907
- Median monthly salaryfrom 4 recorded salaries
- 675 kuruş
- Places with officials
- 1
Profile of the group: Correspondence and registry
No source read describes Muhimme Kalemi Basmemuru by itself, so this is the profile of its group of job titles.
Offices that drafted, copied, registered and kept official papers: correspondence offices (tahrirat), whose regulations of 1869 at the Foreign Ministry name a chief clerk, drafters, copyists and registrars (mukayyit),1 the offices of a corresponding secretary (mektubi), who handled incoming and outgoing correspondence,2 and records offices (evrak), such as the Records Office of the Sublime Porte, which by 1861 supervised the flow of papers between the Porte and the other offices in Istanbul and kept records so that papers could be found when needed.3
Hard skills
- official writing (kitabet), composition (inşa) and the kinds of script, learned in the offices until just before the Tanzimat4
- official and private letter writing (kitabet-i resmiyye ve hususiyye) and the method of official writing (usul-i kitabet), taught at the Mekteb-i Maarif-i Adliyye from 1839 and at the Darülmaarif from 18495
History
Until just before the Tanzimat, clerks were trained on the job in the offices (kalem), each of which served as a school, mostly for the children of officials and dignitaries. Children began to attend an office at twelve, sometimes at seven or eight, learned official writing there from the senior clerks, drew no salary at first, and after three to five years became supernumeraries (mülazım) on a small salary.4
Notes
- Findley, Carter V. (1980). Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789-1922. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 199.
- Findley (1980), p. 78.
- Findley (1980), pp. 171-172.
- Akyıldız, Ali (2019). Mekteb-i Maârif-i Adliyye. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, supplement vol. 2 (revised third printing), 236-238, paragraph beginning ‘Osmanlı devlet bürokrasisi için’. Online copy (read 14 October 2026).
- İpşirli, Mehmet (2001). Kalemiye. TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 24, 248-249, paragraph beginning ‘Bu sınıfın yetişmesi’. Online copy (read 14 October 2026).
Each statement above ends with the number of its note, which gives the work and the page or paragraph it comes from.
Places
| Place | Province | Officials | Annual entries | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Istanbul (Dersaadet) | Istanbul (Dersaadet) province | 2 | 4 | 1880 to 1907 |
Ottoman officials recorded
2 officials, the one with most annual entries first.
| Official | Years | Annual entries | Kuruş a month | Birthplace |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hasib Efendi | 1905 to 1907 | 2 | 750 | Istanbul (Dersaadet) |
| İsmail İsmet Efendi | 1880 to 1882 | 2 | 600 | Istanbul (Dersaadet) |
Years run from the first to the last annual entry. An official without a recorded name is listed after the named officials.
How to read these records: years and calendars, what first recorded means, gaps between annual entries, and salaries.
Subjects
- Muhimme Kalemi Basmemuru
- Ottoman job titles (Osmanlı memuriyet unvanları)
- Labour history (emek tarihi)
- Salaries of officials (memur maaşları)
- Ottoman history (Osmanlı tarihi)
- Ottoman bureaucracy (Osmanlı bürokrasisi)
- Ottoman officials (Osmanlı'da memurlar)
- Ottoman personnel registers (Sicill-i Ahvâl defterleri)
- Ottoman registers (Osmanlı defterleri)