Albanian alphabet (Caucasian)
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The alphabet of the Caucasian Albanians or Aghbanians, one of the Ibero-Caucasian peoples, ancient and indigenous population of modern Azerbaijan and Daghestan is also called the Albanian alphabet (in addition to that of the modern country of Albania; see Albanian alphabet). This alphabet (with 52 letters) was invented in the 6th century AD on basis of the Georgian Asomtavruli and was discovered in 1937 by the noted Georgian scholar, Professor Ilia Abuladze; however, the extreme paucity of inscriptions made interpretation difficult. The first reasonably long work in Albanian was discovered on a palimpsest in St. Catherine's Orthodox Monastery on Mount Sinai in 2003 by Dr. Zaza Alexidze; it was an lectionary dating to the late 4th or early 5th century AD, with a Georgian Patericon written over it. It finally confirmed that Albanian was ancestral to modern Udi.
Literature
- Ilia Abuladze. "About the discovery of the alphabet of the Caucasian Albanians".- "Bulletin of the Institute of Language, History and Material Culture (ENIMK)", Vol. 4, Ch. I, Tbilisi, 1938Template:Ling-stub