The Phags-pa block contains characters used in the Phags-pa script, which was created in the 13th century by the Tibetan lama Phags-pa for the Mongol Empire under Kublai Khan. The script was intended to be a unified script for writing Mongolian, Chinese, Tibetan, and other languages of the empire. The Phags-pa script is alphabetic, and this block includes all the characters needed to write in it. Although the script was eventually supplanted by other writing systems, it is an important part of the historical development of writing in East Asia and Central Asia..