Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Homered (talk | contribs) at 15:29, 21 February 2010. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Caucasian Albanian alphabet was an alphabet presumably used by the Caucasian Albanians, one of the ancient but long-extinct group of peoples whose territory comprised parts of present-day Azerbaijan and Daghestan.

Although mentioned in early sources, no written examples of it were known to exist until it was supposedly rediscovered in 1937 by a Georgian scholar, Professor Ilia Abuladze. The alphabet was found in Matenadaran MS No. 7117, an Armenian language manual from the 15th century. This manual presents different alphabets for comparison: Armenian, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, and Caucasian Albanian among them. The Caucasian Albanian alphabet had an Armenian title: "Aluanic girn e" (Albanian letters).

Azerbaijanis allege that between 1947 and 1952, archaeological excavations at Mingachevir under the guidance of S. Kaziev found a number of artifacts with Albanian writing — a stone altar post with an inscription around its border that consisted of seventy letters, and another six Albanian epigraphic artifacts with brief texts (containing from five to fifty letters), including candlesticks, a tile fragment, and a vessel fragment.

The Udi language, spoken by some 8000 people, mostly in Azerbaijan but also in Georgia and Armenia, is thought to be the last remnant of the language once spoken in Caucasian Albania.

According to the medieval Armenian historian Movses Kaghankatvatsi, the Caucasian Albanian alphabet was created by Mesrob Mashtots, the Armenian monk, theologian and translator who is also credited with creating the Armenian and Georgian alphabets. This is also shared by all major encyclopedias.

Mesrob Mashtots's pupil, Koriun, in his book The Life of Mashtots, wrote:

Then there came and visited them an elderly man, an Albanian named Benjamin. And he Mesrob Mashdots 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.

References

1. 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.
2. 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. ISBN 0226450589, 9780226450582
3. "Caucasian Albanian Script. The Significance of Decipherment" (2003) by Dr. Zaza Alexidze.
4. Moses Kalankaytuk, The History of Aluank, I, 27 and III, 24.
5. Koriun, The life of Mashtots, Ch. 16.

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
• For a specimen of the 'Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest', see : Wolfgang Schulze “The Language of the ‘Caucasian Albanian’ (Aluan) Palimpsest from Mt. Sinai and of the ‘Caucasian Albanian’ inscriptions”
• Multiple articles on the script:

• Alphabetic writing systems
• Scripts without ISO 15924 code
• History of Azerbaijan
• History of the Caucasus
• Caucasian Albania
• Udi language