The Phags-pa or ḥPags-pa script is an alphabet designed by the Tibetan monk and State Preceptor (later Imperial Preceptor) Drogön Chögyal Phagpa for Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty, as a unified script for the written languages within the Yuan. The actual use of this script was limited to about a hundred years during the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, and it fell out of use with the advent of the Ming dynasty. It was used to write and transcribe varieties of Chinese, the Tibetic languages, Mongolian, the Uyghur language, Sanskrit, probably Persian, and other neighboring languages during the Yuan era. For historical linguists, the documentation of its use provides clues about the changes in these languages. Its descendant systems include Horizontal square script, used to write Tibetan and Sanskrit. There is a theory that the Korean Hangul alphabet had a limited influence from Phags-pa (see Origin of Hangul). During the Pax Mongolica the script has even made numerous appearances in western medieval art. Nomenclature Phags-pa script: , "Mongolian script"; , "square script"; , "square writing" "new Mongolian script"; Yuan dynasty "new Mongolian script"; ; pinyin: guózì "national script"; Modern "Phags-pa script"; In English, it is also written as ḥPags-pa, Phaspa, Paspa, Baschpah, and Pa-sse-pa. History During the Mongol Empire, the Mongol rulers wanted a universal script to write down the languages of the people they subjugated. The Uyghur-based Mongolian alphabet is not a perfect fit for the Middle Mongol language, and it would be impractical to extend it to a language with a very different phonology like Chinese. Therefore, during the Yuan dynasty (c. 1269), Kublai Khan asked the Tibetan monk Phags-pa to design a new alphabet for use by the whole empire. Phags-pa extended his native Tibetan alphabet to encompass Mongol and Chinese, evidently Central Plains Mandarin. The resulting 38 letters have been known by several descriptive names, such as "square script" based on their shape, but today are primarily known as the Phags-pa alphabet. Descending from Tibetan script it is part of the Brahmic family of scripts, which includes Devanagari and scripts used throughout Southeast Asia and Central Asia. It is unique among Brahmic scripts in that it is written top bottom, like how classical Chinese used to be written; and like the Manchu alphabet or later Mongolian alphabet. Despite its origin, the script was written vertically (top to bottom) like the previous Mongolian scripts. It did