The Ottoman katib presents a real paradoxical case for the historian. He is the author of a vast body of archival material, he is everywhere in that sense but as the subject of historical inquiry he often remains invisible. The transformation of the political cadres, from domination by the seyfiye (‘people of the sword’) to the prominence of the kalemiye (‘people of the pen’) still remains a well-established aspect of late seventeenth-century Ottoman history. In spite of the increasing visibility of a distinct community of scribes in the political, diplomatic and cultural life of the Empire, not much is known about the Ottoman scribe and the community of scribes in this period. Based on my study of the seventeenth-century Ottoman scribal culture, I argue that beginning from the mid-seventeenth century, “scribal literacy” signifying the combination of certain literate/literary skills required from scribes, shifted to the centre of Ottoman political discourse, and eventually gained critical value as an essential political capital. In this paper I will discuss examples from a number of literary genres including the kaside, the münazara, and the kalemiye. These different literary products mirror scribes’ constant preoccupation with the quality of their discourse, which was critical to define their intellectual identity and assert their indispensability as political actors. These pre-existing genres were resuscitated and restructured to create a discursive world where the katib, as the embodiment of literary - edibane skills, was transformed into being the only figure to introduce a degree of sophistication to the political realm.