The Caucasian Albanian script (also called Aghbanian or Aghwan) was an alphabetic writing system used by the Caucasian Albanians, one of the ancient Northeast Caucasian peoples whose territory comprised parts of the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan and Dagestan.

It was used to write the Caucasian Albanian language and was one of only two native scripts ever developed for speakers of an indigenous Caucasian language (i.e., a language that has no genealogical relationship to other languages outside the Caucasus and Yafzanian language tree), the other being the Georgian scripts. The Armenian language, the third language of the Caucasus and Armenian Highlands with its own native script, is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family.

History According to Movses Kaghankatvatsi, the Caucasian Albanian script was created by Mesrop Mashtots, "Rather, we have to assume that Old Udi corresponds to the language of the ancient Gargars (cf. Movsēs Kałankatuac‘i who tells us that Mesrop Maštoc‘ (362-440) created with the help [of the bishop Ananian and the translator Benjamin] an alphabet for the guttural, harsh, barbarous, and rough language of the Gargarac‘ik‘)."К. В. Тревер. Очерки по истории и культуре Кавказской Албании. М—Л., 1959:"Как известно, в V в. Месроп Маштоц, создавая албанский алфавит, в основу его положил гаргарское наречие албанского языка («создал письмена гаргарского языка, богатого горловыми звуками»). Это последнее обстоятельство позволяет высказать предположение, что именно гаргары являлись наиболее культурным и ведущим албанским племенем."Peter R. Ackroyd. The Cambridge history of the Bible. — Cambridge University Press, 1963. — vol. 2. — p. 368:"The third Caucasian people, the Albanians, also received an alphabet from Mesrop, to supply scripture for their Christian church. This church did not survive beyond the conquests of Islam, and all but few traces of the script have been lost, and there are no remains of the version known." the Armenian monk, theologian and translator who is also credited with creating the Armenian and—by some scholars—the Georgian scripts.Donald Rayfield "The Literature of Georgia: A History (Caucasus World). RoutledgeCurzon. . P. 19. "The Georgian alphabet seems unlikely to have a pre-Christian origin, for the major archaeological monument of the first century 4IX the bilingual Armazi gravestone commemorating Serafua, daughter of the Georgian viceroy of Mtskheta, is inscribed in Greek and Aramaic only. It has been believed, and not only in Armenia, that all the Caucasian alphabets — Armenian, Georgian and Caucaso-Albanian — were invented in the fourth century by the Armenian scholar Mesrop Mashtots.<...> The Georgian chronicles The Life of Kanli – assert that a Georgian script was invented two centuries before Christ, an assertion unsupported by archaeology. There is a possibility that the Georgians, like many minor nations of the area, wrote in a foreign language — Persian, Aramaic, or Greek — and translated back as they read." Koriun, a pupil of Mesrop Mashtots, in his book The Life of Mashtots, wrote about the circumstances of its creation: Then there came and visited them an elderly man, an Albanian named Benjamin. And he, Mesrop Mashtots, inquired and examined the barbaric diction of the Albanian language, and then through his usual God-given keenness of mind invented an alphabet, which he, through the grace of Christ, successfully organized and put in order.Koriun, The life of Mashtots, Ch. 16. The alphabet was in use from its creation in the early 5th century through the 12th century, and was used not only formally by the Church of Caucasian Albania, but also for secular purposes. "In addition, a small number of inscriptions on candleholders, roofing tiles and on a pedestal found since 1947 in Central and Northern Azerbaijan illustrate that the Aluan alphabet had in fact been in practical use."

Rediscovery Although mentioned in early sources, no examples of it were known to exist until its rediscovery in 1937 by a Georgian scholar, Professor Ilia Abuladze,Ilia Abuladze. "About the discovery of the alphabet of the Caucasian Aghbanians". In the Bulletin of the Institute of Language, History and Material Culture (ENIMK), Vol. 4, Ch. I, Tbilisi, 1938. in Matenadaran MS No. 7117, a manual from the 15th century. This manual presents different alphabets for comparison: Armenian, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, and Caucasian Albanian among them.

Between 1947 and 1952, archaeological excavations at Mingachevir under the guidance of S. Kaziev found a number of artifacts with Caucasian Albanian writing, namely a stone altar post with an inscription around its border that consisted of 70 letters, and another 6 artifacts with brief texts (containing from 5 to 50 letters), including candlesticks, a tile fragment, and a vessel fragment.Philip L. Kohl, Mara Kozelsky, Nachman Ben-Yehuda. Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts. University of Chicago Press, 2007. ,

The first literary work in the Caucasian Albanian alphabet was discovered on a palimpsest in Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in 2003 by Zaza Aleksidze; it is a fragmentary lectionary dating to the late 4th or early 5th century AD, containing verses from 2 Corinthians 11, with a Georgian Patericon written over it.Zaza Alexidze; Discovery and Decipherment of Caucasian Albanian Writing Jost Gippert, professor of Comparative Linguistics at the University of Frankfurt am Main, and others have published this palimpsest that contains also liturgical readings taken from the Gospel of John.Gippert, Jost / Schulze, Wolfgang / Aleksidze, Zaza / Mahé, Jean-Pierre: The Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests of Mount Sinai, 2 vols., XXIV + 530 pp.; Turnhout: Brepols 2009

Legacy The Udi language, spoken by some 8,000 people, mostly in the Republic of Azerbaijan but also in Georgia and Armenia,Wolfgang Schulze, "The Udi Language", is considered to be the last direct continuator of the Caucasian Albanian language.The Arab geographers refer to the Arranian language as still spoken in the neighbourhood of Barda'a (Persian: Peroz-Abadh, Armenian Partav), but now only the two villages inhabited by the Udi are considered as the direct continuators of the Albanian linguistic tradition. V. Minorsky. Caucasica IV. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 15, No. 3. (1953), pp. 504–529."Caucasian Albanian Script. The Significance of Decipherment" (2003) by Dr. Zaza Alexidze.

Characters The script consists of 52 letters, all of which can also represent numerals from 1 to 700,000 when a combining mark is added above, below, or both above and below them, described as similar to Coptic. 49 of these letters are found in the Sinai palimpsests.

Several punctuation marks are also present, including a middle dot, a separating colon, an apostrophe, paragraph marks, and citation marks. Caucasian Albanian numeral 2: Caucasian Albanian letter bet, with Coptic-like numeral combining marks above and below.

Letters Unicode character Letter name Pronunciation Sinai Palimpsest Matenadaran Manuscript 7117 Numeric value Alt /a/ 1 Bet /b/ 2 Gim /ɡ/ 3 Dat /d/ 4 Eb /e/ 5 Zarl /z/ 6 Eyn /eː/ 7 Zhil /ʒ/ 8 Tas /t/ 9 Cha /ʨʼ/ 10 Yowd /j/ 20 Zha /ʑ/ 30 Irb /i/ 40 Sha /ˤ/ 50 Lan /l/ 60 Inya /nʲ/ 70 Xeyn /x/ 80 Dyan /dʲ/ 90 Car /ʦʼ/ 100 Jhox /ʥ/ 200 Kar /kʼ/ 300 Lyit /lʲ/ 400 Heyt /h/ 500 Qay /q/ 600 Aor /ɒ/ 700 Choy /ʨ/ 800 Chi /ʧʼ/ 900 Cyay /ʦʲ/ 1,000 Maq /m/ 2,000 Qar /qʼ/ 3,000 Nowc /n/ 4,000 Dzyay /ʣʲ/ 5,000 Shak /ʃ/ 6,000 Jayn /ʤ/ 7,000 On /o/ 8,000 Tyay /tʲʼ/ 9,000 Fam /f/ 10,000 Dzay /ʣ/ 20,000 Chat /ʧ/ 30,000 Pen /pʼ/ 40,000 Gheys /ɣ/ 50,000 Rat /r/ 60,000 Seyk /s/ 70,000 Veyz /v/ 80,000 Tiwr /tʼ/ 90,000 Shoy /ɕ/ 100,000 Iwn /ə/ 200,000 Cyaw /ʦʲʼ/ 300,000 Cayn /ʦ/ 400,000 Yayd /w/ 500,000 Piwr /p/ 600,000 Kiw /k/ 700,000

Unicode

The Caucasian Albanian alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in June, 2014 with the release of version 7.0.

The Unicode block for Caucasian Albanian is U+10530–1056F:

References

External links Armazi project: Jost Gippert: The "Albanian" Alphabet as preserved in Armenian Tradition – has images of glyphs Zaza Aleksidze: A Breakthrough in the Script of Caucasian Albany