The History of Uighur script and calligraphy in Persian manuscripts

  Abstract After Mongol invasion into Iranian plateau new cultural elements entered by the invaders which influenced on some aspects of Persian book art. Uighur script which first was used to write Mongol and then eastern Turkish languages, appeared in Persian Manuscripts which were produced for Timurid governors and some of famous works are remained from Yazd, Herat, Guilan and Shiraz. These cities were places governed by Timurid Princes. many of local governors were patrons of art and have their own atelier.Some of famous Art ateliers such as Iskandar sultan ,Ibrahim sultan in shiraz and Baysunghur Mirza in Herat were famous for their book art. Such masterpieces were produced by different famous calligraphers. These artistic manuscripts used and improved Nastaliq calligraphy as a poetic script and it gradually became the most usual script in Persian culture. Beside other scripts, Uighur script which first was used in Payza (Payzeh), coins and royal Mongol documents appeared in some of manuscripts. Studies on Uighur script often focused on historical documents and coins but a chronological study of manuscript production in Uighur script in Iran has not been done yet. This Paper tries to classify manuscripts which are completely or partially written in Uighur script to show how many Persian manuscripts are written in Uighur script. The scope of using Uighur script and its relation to other common scripts(Qalams)will be discussed. Uighur script disappeared at the end of the 9 century(15th A.D) due to some reasons such as its difficulty and alphabet similarity.