Diffusion of the Uyghur script

Timeline

1. 1071–1080Kashgar · KashgarWhile the Eastern Khanate of Kara-Khanid promoted Islamization and Arabic script for official documents, the populace and lower administrative levels still used Uyghur script to write Turkic contracts, letters, and surviving Buddhist texts, forming a bilingual Arabic-Uyghur pattern.
2. 1071–1075Dunhuang · DunhuangLarge numbers of Uyghur Buddhist texts and secular documents were unearthed from the Library Cave at Dunhuang and surrounding sites, showing that in the 11th century Uyghur-Turkic communities in the Hexi region still used this script for religious recitation and daily record-keeping, coexisting with Chinese and Tibetan documents.
3. 1076–1080Tarim Basin · Tarim BasinThe continued use of Uyghur script in the oasis city-states of the Tarim Basin provided a direct alphabetic source for the Mongol Empire's adoption of the Uyghur alphabet to write Mongolian in the 13th century (later evolving into traditional Mongolian script); the 11th century was a key transitional stage in this chain of transmission.