Salnames, both the provincial and imperial ones, are used widely by Ottoman historians to mine information such as governmental structure, demographics, and economic circumstances. The first Baghdad salname was published in 1875, including a wealth of knowledge about the structure of the provincial government as well as its history. Using the 22 issues of Baghdad salname as a case study, this paper discusses how considering the salname as a transferable and transmutable global administrative genre can tell us about the means and processes of production and dissemination of knowledge in the Ottoman Empire and beyond. This paper proposes three avenues to study an administrative genre; first, an administrative genre can be discussed through study of the structure and format. This paper argues that the changes and consistencies in the format of the provincial salname signals both the constraints of the genre as well as local innovations due to the specific needs of the provincial government in Baghdad. Second, close textual analysis of the text of the whole body of the Baghdad salnames published from 1875 to 1909 reveals immense production and accumulation of knowledge about the province. The salnames were published by the provincial administrative elite, most of whom were trained in the newly established schools during the Tanzimat era. This paper thus argues that salnames as a genre and historical source are one of our best insights into the structure and concerns of the provincial administration as opposed to the central Ottoman state and its dominant archive. Third, in contextualizing the Baghdad salnames in the wider context of provincial salnamas within the Empire and other iterations of this genre globally, this paper argues that modern administrative genres came into existence due to evolving technological advances and new concerns in terms of governance. The first Ottoman salname was inspired by the French state annual reports. The genre travelled to Iran after the Qajar Shah travelled to Baghdad and Europe in 1870s. The Baghdad salnames appeared after the governorship of Midhat Pasa in the province, who brought the genre with him from the birthing region of Ottoman provincial salnames, the Balkans. This paper, therefore, demonstrates that through considering the format, text, and context of an administrative genre we can trace local, imperial, and global networks of production and dissemination of knowledge in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.