The Old Uyghur alphabet was a Turkic script used for writing the Old Uyghur, a variety of

Old Turkic Old Turkic (also East Old Turkic, Orkhon Turkic language, Old Uyghur) is the earliest attested form of the Turkic languages, found in Göktürk and Uyghur Khaganate inscriptions dating from about the eighth to the 13th century. It is the old ...

spoken in

Turpan Turpan (also known as Turfan or Tulufan, , ug, تۇرپان) is a prefecture-level city located in the east of the autonomous region of Xinjiang, China. It has an area of and a population of 632,000 (2015). Geonyms The original name of the cit ...

and Gansu that is the ancestor of the modern

Western Yugur language Western Yugur (Western Yugur: (Yugur speech) or (Yugur word)) also known as Neo-Uygur is the Turkic language spoken by the Yugur people. It is contrasted with Eastern Yugur, a Mongolic language spoken within the same community. Traditionally, ...

. The term "Old Uyghur" used for this alphabet is misleading because

Qocho Qocho (), also known as Idiqut, ("holy wealth"; "glory"; "lord of fortune") was a Uyghur kingdom created in 843, with strong Chinese Buddhist and Tocharian influences. It was founded by Uyghur refugees fleeing the destruction of the Uyghur K ...

, the Uyghur (Yugur) kingdom created in 843, originally used the

Old Turkic alphabet The Old Turkic script (also known as variously Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script, Turkic runes) was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old Tu ...

. The Uyghur adopted this "Old Uyghur" script from local inhabitants when they migrated into Turfan after 840. It was an adaptation of the Aramaic alphabet used for texts with

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

, Manichaean and Christian content for 700–800 years in

. The last known manuscripts are dated to the 18th century. This was the prototype for the Mongolian and

Manchu alphabet The Manchu alphabet ( mnc, m=, v=manju hergen, a=manju hergen) is the alphabet used to write the now nearly-extinct Manchu language. A similar script is used today by the Sibe people, Xibe people, who speak a Xibe language, language consider ...

s. The Old Uyghur alphabet was brought to Mongolia by Tata-tonga. The Old Uyghur script was used between the 8th and 17th centuries primarily in the

Tarim Basin The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Northwest China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China.Chen, Yaning, et al. "Regional climate change and its effects on river runoff in the Tarim Basin, China." Hydr ...

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a subregion, region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes t ...

, located in present-day

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...

Uygur Autonomous Region, China. It is a cursive-joining alphabet with features of an

abjad An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...

and is written vertically. The script flourished through the 15th century in Central Asia and parts of

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

, but it was eventually replaced by the Arabic script in the 16th century. Its usage was continued in Gansu through the 17th century. Like the

Sogdian alphabet The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdia. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, a descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet. The Sogdian alphabet is one of t ...

(technically, an

), the Old Uyghur tended to use ''matres lectionis'' for the long vowels as well as for the short ones. The practice of leaving short vowels unrepresented was almost completely abandoned.Clauson, Gerard. 2002. Studies in Turkic and Mongolic linguistics. P.110-111. Thus, while ultimately deriving from a Semitic

, the Old Uyghur alphabet can be said to have been largely "alphabetized".Houston, Stephen D. 2004. ''The first writing: script invention as history and process'' (p.59).

Gallery

File:Yuntai Uyghur west wall.jpg,

Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fift ...

Buddhist inscription written in Old Uyghur on the west wall of the

Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass The Cloud Platform at Juyongguan () is a mid-14th-century architectural feature situated in the Guangou Valley at the Juyongguan Pass of the Great Wall of China, in the Changping District of Beijing Municipality, about northwest of central Be ...

File:Yuntai Uyghur east wall.jpg, Yuan dynasty Buddhist inscription written in Old Uyghur on the east wall of the Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass File:回鹘文定慧大师卖奴契.JPG, Slave contract File:Mannerheim - Across Asia from West to East in 1906-08 (1909, 1940, 1969) vol 2.pdf, page=198, Contract on taxation File:高昌館來文.pdf, page=4,

Ming The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han peop ...

era text from volume with accompanying Chinese translation File:An epitaph of a Nestorian Christian.jpg, Yuan era epitaph File:Fetihname Fatih.jpg,

Mehmed the Conqueror Mehmed II ( ota, محمد ثانى, translit=Meḥmed-i s̱ānī; tr, II. Mehmed, ; 30 March 14323 May 1481), commonly known as Mehmed the Conqueror ( ota, ابو الفتح, Ebū'l-fetḥ, lit=the Father of Conquest, links=no; tr, Fâtih Su ...

's ''Fetihname'' (Declaration of conquest) after the

Battle of Otlukbeli The Battle of Otlukbeli or Otluk Beli was a battle between Aq Qoyunlu and the Ottoman Empire that was fought on August 11, 1473. Background In autumn of 1463, Republic of Venice opened negotiations with Uzun Hasan. In 1464, Uzun Hasan interve ...

File:Jarlig Temur Qutlugh copy 1 GIM.jpg, Jarlig of

Temür Qutlugh Temür Qutlugh or Tīmūr Qutluq ( 1370 – 1399) was a Khan of Golden Horde in 1397–1399. Ancestry According to the detailed genealogies of the ''Muʿizz al-ansāb'' and the ''Tawārīḫ-i guzīdah-i nuṣrat-nāmah'', Tīmūr Qutluq was th ...

Unicode

The Old Uyghur alphabet was added to the

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

Standard in September, 2021 with the release of version 14.0. The Unicode block for Old Uyghur is U+10F70–U+10FAF:

References

Citations

Sources

External links