Hatt-i humayun

Sultan Abdulmecid's hatt-i humayun (written in red, horizontally, on top) on a memorandum (in black, below) about certain mosques needing to be repaired.[1] The red handwriting in diagonal is a summary by the grand vizier of the original memorandum. The sultan writes: "I have been informed. Those structures mentioned in this summary are to be rebuilt expeditiously for Jum'ah and Bayram prayers.

Hatt-i humayun (Ottoman Turkish: خط همايون ḫaṭṭ-ı hümayun, plural خط همايونلر, ḫaṭṭ-ı hümayunlar), also known as hatt-i sharif (خط شریف ḫaṭṭ-ı şerîf, plural خط شریفلر, ḫaṭṭ-ı şerîfler), was the diplomatics term for a document or handwritten note of an official nature composed by an Ottoman sultan. These notes were commonly written by the sultan personally, although they could also be transcribed by a palace scribe. They were written usually in response to, and directly on, a document submitted to the sultan by the grand vizier or another officer of the Ottoman government. Thus, they could be approvals or denials of a letter of petition, acknowledgements of a report, grants of permission for a request, an annotation to a decree, or other government documents. Hatt-i humayuns could also be composed from scratch, rather than as a response to an existing document.

After the Tanzimat era (1839–1876), aimed at modernizing the Ottoman Empire, hatt-i humayuns of the routine kind were supplanted by the practice of irade-i seniyye (Ottoman Turkish: اراده سنیه irâde-i seniyye; French: iradé[2] or less standardly iradèh, meaning 'ordonnance'[note 1]), in which the sultan's spoken response was recorded on the document by his scribe.

There are nearly 100,000 hatt-i humayuns in the Ottoman archives in Istanbul. Among the more famous are the Hatt-i Sharif of Gulhane (Ottoman Turkish: خط شریف گلخانه, also known as the Tanzimat Fermani [تنظیمات فرمانی]) of 1839 and the Imperial Reform Edict ([اصلاحات خط همايونى] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |link= (help)) of 1856. The first one, which opened the Tanzimat era, is so called because it carries a handwritten order by the sultan to the grand vizier to execute his command.

The term hatt-i humayun can sometimes also be used in a literal sense, meaning a document handwritten by an Ottoman sultan.

  1. ^ "Hatt-ı Hümâyun". Retrieved 29 August 2012.
  2. ^ Littré, Émile (1886). "iradé". Dictionnaire de la langue française (in French). Paris: Hachette. p. 205.
  3. ^ Strauss, Johann (2010). "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire: Translations of the Kanun-ı Esasi and Other Official Texts into Minority Languages". In Herzog, Christoph; Malek Sharif (eds.). The First Ottoman Experiment in Democracy. Wurzburg. pp. 21–51.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) (info page on book at Martin Luther University) - Cited: p. 40 (PDF p. 42) // "Other terms, like iradèh ("ordonnance;” Turkish irade), which have become obsolete today, were quite common at that time in the European press."


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