or "Huihu", an archaic transliteration of "Uyghur". The Kara-Khanid culture started as a literate tradition, with a body of Muslim subjects recorded in the vertical Sogdian script of the first Uyghur Empire . The Islamized Karluk princely clan, the Balasaghunlu Ashinalar (the Kara-Khanids) gravitated toward the Persian Islamic cultural zone [