Mongol campaign subdues the Uighurs

1209

The Uighur kingdom of Qocho, a literate Buddhist and Manichaean oasis state along the northern Silk Road, submitted peacefully to Genghis Khan and provided scribes who gave the Mongols their first written script. Uighur administrators would staff Mongol chanceries from Karakorum to Tabriz for generations. Their vertical alphabet, adapted from Syriac through Sogdian, became the mother script of Mongolian and Manchu writing.