The Politics of Eloquence traces the career of Rami Mehmed, an Istanbul-born Ottoman secretary who became the chief scribe in the second half of the seventeenth century. The book studies how a community of Ottoman secretaries of which Rami Mehmed was a part, crafted a unique discourse, claiming that their secretarial eloquence entitled them to the highest imperial offices. This study links the story of an ordinary Ottoman citizen to the secretaries’ growing political importance in the empire.