Old Uyghur alphabet

Old Uyghur alphabet
Script type	Alphabet or abjad
Time period	ca.700s–1800s
Direction	Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts, top-to-bottom  Vertical (left-to-right); Horizontal (right-to-left), used in modern printing, especially in multi-lingual publications
Languages	Old Uyghur, Western Yugur
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Syriac Sogdian Old Uyghur alphabet
Child systems	Traditional Mongolian alphabet
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Ougr (143), ​Old Uyghur
Unicode
Unicode alias	Old Uyghur
Unicode range	U+10F70–U+10FAF

The Old Uyghur alphabet was a Turkic script used for writing Old Uyghur, a variety of Old Turkic spoken in Turpan and Gansu that is the ancestor of the modern Western Yugur language.^[1] The term "Old Uyghur" used for this alphabet is misleading because Qocho, the Uyghur (Yugur) kingdom created in 843, originally used the Old Turkic alphabet. The Uyghur adopted this "Old Uyghur" script from local inhabitants when they migrated into Turfan after 840.^[2] It was an adaptation of the Aramaic alphabet used for texts with Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian content for 700–800 years in Turpan. The last known manuscripts are dated to the 18th century. This was the prototype for the Mongolian and Manchu alphabets. 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 of Central Asia, located in present-day Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. The script flourished through the 15th century in Central Asia and parts of Iran, but it was eventually replaced by the Arabic script in the 16th century. Its usage was continued in Gansu through the 17th century.^[3]