Khitan small script

Khitan small script
Bronze mirror with a poetic inscription
Script type	Logographic with syllabary and possibly some phonograms
Time period	10th century — 12th century
Direction	Top-to-bottom and right-to-left
Languages	Khitan language
Related scripts
Parent systems	Oracle bone script Seal script Clerical script Khitan small script
Sister systems	Simplified Chinese, Kanji, Hanja, Tangut script, Chữ Hán, Zhuyin
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Kits (288), ​Khitan small script
Unicode
Unicode alias	Khitan Small Script
Unicode range	U+18B00–U+18CFF Khitan Small Script U+16FE0–U+16FFF Ideographic Symbols & Punct.

The Khitan small script (Chinese: 契丹小字; pinyin: qìdān xiǎozì) was one of two writing systems used for the now-extinct Khitan language. It was used during the 10th–12th century by the Khitan people, who had created the Liao Empire in present-day northeastern China. In addition to the small script, the Khitans simultaneously also used a functionally independent writing system known as the Khitan large script. Both Khitan scripts continued to be in use to some extent by the Jurchens for several decades after the fall of the Liao dynasty, until the Jurchens fully switched to a script of their own. Examples of the scripts appeared most often on epitaphs and monuments, although other fragments sometimes surface.