Caucasian Albanian script

Caucasian Albanian
Caucasian Albanian;
	Matenadaran MS No. 7117, fol. 142r
Script type	Alphabet
Period	5th – 12th century AD
Direction	Left-to-right
Related scripts
Parent systems	Greek Caucasian Albanian;
Sister systems	Georgian script
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Aghb (239), Caucasian Albanian
Unicode
Unicode alias	Caucasian Albanian
Unicode range	U+10530–U+1056F; Final Accepted Script Proposal

You may need rendering support to display the uncommon Unicode characters in this article correctly.

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The Caucasian Albanian script 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 is one of the three historical alphabets of the South Caucasus.

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), the other being the Georgian scripts.^[2] 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.

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,^[3] 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 — 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.^[4]

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.^[5]^[6] 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.^[7]

Legacy

The Udi language, spoken by some 8,000 people, mostly in the Republic of Azerbaijan but also in Georgia and Armenia,^[8] is considered to be the last direct continuator of the Caucasian Albanian language.^[9]^[10]

Characters

The script consists of 52 characters, 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 the characters are found in the Sinai palimpsests.^[11] Several punctuation marks are also present, including a middle dot, a separating colon, an apostrophe, paragraph marks, and citation marks.

Letters

Caucasian Albanian
Sinai Palimpsest	Matenadaran Manuscript 7117	Unicode	Numeric value	Letter Name	Pronunciation
		??	1	Alt	/a/
		??	2	Bet	/b/
		??	3	Gim	/ɡ/
		??	4	Dat	/d/
		??	5	Eb	/e/
		??	6	Zarl	/z/
		??	7	Eyn	/e?/
		??	8	Zhil	/?/
		??	9	Tas	/t/
		??	10	Cha	/??/
		??	20	Yowd	/j/
		??	30	Zha	/?/
		??	40	Irb	/i/
		??	50	Sha	/?/
		??	60	Lan	/l/
		??	70	Inya	/n?/
		??	80	Xeyn	/x/
		??	90	Dyan	/d?/
		??	100	Car	/??/
		??	200	Jhox	/?/
		??	300	Kar	/k?/
		??	400	Lyit	/l?/
		??	500	Heyt	/h/
		??	600	Qay	/q/
		??	700	Aor	/?/
		??	800	Choy	/?/
		??	900	Chi	/??/
		??	1000	Cyay	/??/
		??	2000	Maq	/m/
		??	3000	Qar	/q?/
		??	4000	Nowc	/n/
		??	5000	Dzyay	/??/
		??	6000	Shak	/?/
		??	7000	Jayn	/?/
		??	8000	On	/o/
		??	9000	Tyay	/t??/
		??	10000	Fam	/f/
		??	20000	Dzay	/?/
		??	30000	Chat	/?/
		??	40000	Pen	/p?/
		??	50000	Gheys	/?/
		??	60000	Rat	/r/
		??	70000	Seyk	/s/
		??	80000	Veyz	/v/
		??	90000	Tiwr	/t?/
		??	100000	Shoy	/?/
		??	200000	Iwn	/?/
		??	300000	Cyaw	/???/
		??	400000	Cayn	/?/
		??	500000	Yayd	/w/
		??	600000	Piwr	/p/
		??	700000	Kiw	/k/

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:

Caucasian Albanian^[1]^[2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
U+1053x	𐔰	𐔱	𐔲	𐔳	𐔴	𐔵	𐔶	𐔷	𐔸	𐔹	𐔺	𐔻	𐔼	𐔽	𐔾	𐔿
U+1054x	𐕀	𐕁	𐕂	𐕃	𐕄	𐕅	𐕆	𐕇	𐕈	𐕉	𐕊	𐕋	𐕌	𐕍	𐕎	𐕏
U+1055x	𐕐	𐕑	𐕒	𐕓	𐕔	𐕕	𐕖	𐕗	𐕘	𐕙	𐕚	𐕛	𐕜	𐕝	𐕞	𐕟
U+1056x	𐕠	𐕡	𐕢	𐕣												𐕯
Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

References

^ Sanjian, Avedis (1996). "The Armenian Alphabet". In Daniels; Bright (eds.). The World's Writing Systems. pp. 356–357.
^ Catford, J.C. (1977). "Mountain of Tongues:The Languages of the Caucasus". Annual Review of Anthropology. 6: 283–314 [296]. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.06.100177.001435.
^ 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.
^ 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 0-226-45058-9, ISBN 978-0-226-45058-2
^ Zaza Alexidze; Discovery and Decipherment of Caucasian Albanian Writing "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2025-08-14. Retrieved 2025-08-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^ Aleksidze, Zaza; Blair, Betty (2003). "Caucasian Albanian Alphabet: Ancient Script Discovered in the Ashes". Azerbaijan International.
^ Gippert, Jost / Schulze, Wolfgang / Aleksidze, Zaza / Mahé, Jean-Pierre: The Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests of Mount Sinai, 2 vols., XXIV + 530 pp.; Turnhout: Brepols 2009
^ Wolfgang Schulze, "The Udi Language", "Udi Grammar Contents". Archived from the original on 2025-08-14. Retrieved 2025-08-14.
^ 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.
^ Everson, Michael; Gippert, Jost (2025-08-14). "N4131R: Proposal for encoding the Caucasian Albanian script in the SMP of the UCS" (PDF). Working Group Document, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2.

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

[Sanjian-1] Sanjian, Avedis (1996). "The Armenian Alphabet". In Daniels; Bright (eds.). The World's Writing Systems. pp. 356–357.

[2] Catford, J.C. (1977). "Mountain of Tongues:The Languages of the Caucasus". Annual Review of Anthropology. 6: 283–314 [296]. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.06.100177.001435.

[3] 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.

[4] 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 0-226-45058-9, ISBN 978-0-226-45058-2

[5] Zaza Alexidze; Discovery and Decipherment of Caucasian Albanian Writing "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2025-08-14. Retrieved 2025-08-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

[6] Aleksidze, Zaza; Blair, Betty (2003). "Caucasian Albanian Alphabet: Ancient Script Discovered in the Ashes". Azerbaijan International.

[7] Gippert, Jost / Schulze, Wolfgang / Aleksidze, Zaza / Mahé, Jean-Pierre: The Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests of Mount Sinai, 2 vols., XXIV + 530 pp.; Turnhout: Brepols 2009

[8] Wolfgang Schulze, "The Udi Language", "Udi Grammar Contents". Archived from the original on 2025-08-14. Retrieved 2025-08-14.

[9] 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.

[10] "Caucasian Albanian Script. The Significance of Decipherment" (2003) by Dr. Zaza Alexidze.

[11] Everson, Michael; Gippert, Jost (2025-08-14). "N4131R: Proposal for encoding the Caucasian Albanian script in the SMP of the UCS" (PDF). Working Group Document, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2.

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