Hatt-i humayun (
Ottoman Turkish:
خط همايون,
Turkish:
hatt-ı hümayun or
hatt-ı hümâyûn), also known as
hatt-i sharif (
hatt-ı şerîf), is the
diplomatics term for a document or handwritten note of an official nature composed by an
Ottoman sultan. The terms come from
hatt (
Arabic: handwriting, command),
hümayun (imperial) and
şerif (lofty, noble). 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-ı hümayuns could be composed from scratch, rather than as a response to an existing document. After the
Tanzimat reform (1856), aimed to modernize the Ottoman Empire,
hatt-ı hümayuns of the routine kind were supplanted by the practice of
irâde-i seniyye, in which the Sultan's spoken response was recorded on the document by his
scribe.