Old Uyghur Alphabet Table
| Sign | Unicode name | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| 𐽰 | Letter Aleph | letter |
| 𐽱 | Letter Beth | letter |
| 𐽲 | Letter Gimel-Heth | letter |
| 𐽳 | Letter Waw | letter |
| 𐽴 | Letter Zayin | letter |
| 𐽵 | Letter Final Heth | letter |
| 𐽶 | Letter Yodh | letter |
| 𐽷 | Letter Kaph | letter |
| 𐽸 | Letter Lamedh | letter |
| 𐽹 | Letter Mem | letter |
| 𐽺 | Letter Nun | letter |
| 𐽻 | Letter Samekh | letter |
| 𐽼 | Letter Pe | letter |
| 𐽽 | Letter Sadhe | letter |
| 𐽾 | Letter Resh | letter |
| 𐽿 | Letter Shin | letter |
| 𐾀 | Letter Taw | letter |
| 𐾁 | Letter Lesh | letter |
| 𐾂 | Combining Dot Above | combining mark |
| 𐾃 | Combining Dot Below | combining mark |
| 𐾄 | Combining Two Dots Above | combining mark |
| 𐾅 | Combining Two Dots Below | combining mark |
| 𐾆 | Punctuation Bar | punctuation |
| 𐾇 | Punctuation Two Bars | punctuation |
| 𐾈 | Punctuation Two Dots | punctuation |
| 𐾉 | Punctuation Four Dots | punctuation |
The Old Uyghur script is a Turkic alphabet in the Aramaic family - descending through the Sogdian script - used to write the Old Uyghur language of the Turpan oasis and Gansu, ancestor of today’s Western Yugur. Its history is a story of adoption rather than invention: when the Uyghurs fled the collapse of their steppe empire after 840 and founded the kingdom of Qocho around Turfan, they took over this script from local inhabitants - the kingdom had previously written with the Old Turkic runic alphabet, so “Old Uyghur” names a script the Uyghurs adopted. It served for some nine centuries (8th to 17th): Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian literature, contracts and letters across the Tarim Basin, with documents attested at Dunhuang and Khara-Khoto as late as the seventeenth century, before the Arabic script displaced it almost everywhere.
The chart above lists the whole Unicode block - 18 letters, four combining marks, four punctuation signs. Two design facts made it historic. It is a cursive-joining alphabet: letters connect along a baseline and take initial, medial and final shapes, while behaving as an abjad that marks vowels with the Aramaic vowel-carrier habit (matres lectionis) inherited from Sogdian. And it is vertical: written top to bottom, columns running left to right - the classic result of rotating a right-to-left horizontal script ninety degrees rather than redesigning it. That vertical habit is its immortality: adopted for the Mongol imperial script after Genghis Khan took the Uyghur scribe Tata-tonga into service, it survives in the Traditional Mongolian and Manchu alphabets, which are still written this way. Unicode encodes the block at U+10F70 (version 14.0, 2021), this chart’s verified source.
How to use
- Read the table by kind: 18 letter rows (their names show the Aramaic ancestry - aleph, beth, gimel-heth, waw, zayin...), four combining marks, four punctuation signs. Remember that each letter takes contextual shapes (isolated, initial, medial, final) when written in the cursive hand - this chart shows the citation forms the Unicode names encode. Vowels follow the abjad logic: the aleph, waw and yodh rows double as vowel carriers for a, o/u and e/i sounds respectively, a habit straight from the Sogdian parent.
- Read vertically when you practice: the traditional direction is top to bottom, columns progressing left to right - the reverse of Chinese vertical writing, which runs right to left, precisely because the script was rotated from a right-to-left horizontal original and kept its line order. Words are separated by spaces, a convenience many abjads skipped. After the 14th century some horizontal manuscripts appear, but the vertical setting is the script’s signature and the form its descendants keep.
- Then follow the political career. In the West Uyghur kingdom (9th-13th centuries) and under Mongol rule this chart’s letters ran the administration and the monasteries; after Genghis Khan defeated the Naiman, the traditional account credits the captured Uyghur scribe Tata-tonga with teaching the Mongols to write - in this script. The Mongol version became the empire’s official medium (the only script in which the secret history era documents ran), and its descendant Traditional Mongolian is a co-official script in Inner Mongolia today. Compare this chart with the Old Sogdian one on this site to see the parent hand, and with the Mongolian chart to see what ninety degrees of rotation and eight centuries of service look like.
Frequently asked questions
Why is it called Old Uyghur if the Uyghurs adopted it?
The name is a known paradox. The Uyghur kingdom of Qocho (founded 843) originally wrote with the Old Turkic runic alphabet; only after migrating into the Turfan area post-840 did the Uyghurs adopt this Sogdian-derived script from the local population. So “Old Uyghur” labels the script’s most famous users rather than its creators - it is a Turkic branch of the Aramaic family, transmitted through Sogdian, and the Uyghurs made it their own for nine centuries.
Why is the Old Uyghur script written vertically?
Because it turned. The script descends from right-to-left horizontal predecessors (Aramaic via Sogdian), and when it moved to a vertical setting, the whole line rotated ninety degrees: columns now run top to bottom, and successive columns progress left to right - the mirror of Chinese vertical writing, which starts from the right. Vertical layout became the script’s signature under the Mongols and remains the norm for its descendants; after the 14th century occasional horizontal examples appear, but they are exceptions.
What is the connection to Genghis Khan?
A scribe. According to the traditional account, when Genghis Khan defeated the Naiman (whose chancellor used this script), he captured the Uyghur scribe Tata-tonga, who then taught the Mongols to write with the Old Uyghur alphabet. The Mongols made it their imperial script - laws, decrees and correspondence ran in its vertical lines across Eurasia - and its adapted descendant, the Traditional Mongolian alphabet, is written vertically to this day, as is Manchu. This chart’s 26 codepoints are therefore the direct ancestors of living scripts.
How is Old Uyghur related to Sogdian?
As child to parent. The script developed from writing traditions derived from Aramaic through the intermediary of Sogdian - and archaeological evidence suggests early Turkic societies used two systems stemming from Sogdian models: this alphabet and the Turkic runic script. Sogdian communities along the silk road were the crucial transmitters of literacy to the Turkic world. On this site you can compare the parent and child directly: the Old Sogdian chart shows the horizontal merchant hand; this chart shows the same family after adoption, cursive-joining and turned vertical.
What did people write in it, and for how long?
Nearly a millennium (8th-17th centuries), across three faiths and two empires. The corpus spans Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian texts, contracts, letters and administrative documents from the West Uyghur kingdom and the Mongol period, with major finds at Dunhuang and Khara-Khoto; some documents date as late as the seventeenth century in Gansu. Its displacement came by religion and politics: where Turkic lands Islamized (the Kara-Khanid realm west of the Pamirs), the Arabic script took over - the Kutadgu Bilig survives in both - leaving this chart’s alphabet the eastern, and ultimately the Mongol, branch of the family.