The Manichaean script is an abjad-based writing system rooted in the Semitic family of alphabets and associated with the spread of Manichaeism from southwest to central Asia and beyond, beginning in the third century CE.

Unlike Pahlavi, the Manichaean script reveals influences from the Sogdian alphabet, which in turn descends from the Syriac branch of Aramaic.

As Manichaeism was persecuted around Mesopotamia and the regions of the Sasanian Empire, its origins, it became well-established in Central Asia and along the Silk Road.

In the 19th century, German expeditions discovered a number of Manichaean manuscripts at Bulayïq on the Silk Road near Turpan in what is now Xinjiang.

Manichaean has a separate sign for the conjunction "ud" (and); two dots are placed above characters to indicate abbreviations, and there are several punctuation-marks to indicate headlines, page-divisions, sentence-divisions, and others.