Khitan Small Script Character 18BC4

To record Khitan, the language of the Liao dynasty. Traditional accounts credit Yelü Diela, younger brother of the Liao dynasty’s founder, with creating it around 925. They say its shapes came from Chinese characters and its method for writing sounds from Uyghur writing, an alphabet. A 2026 study argues it was systematized later under Liao Emperor Shengzong.

That study identifies the Wugulin Taishi epitaph, a memorial inscription for the dead, as the earliest securely dated surviving text, from 1051. Khitan Small Script appeared on memorial stones and in official letters, poems, and translations; it continued under Jin rule after Liao fell. The Jurchen people who founded Jin later modeled their writing systems on the two Khitan scripts.