Caucasian Albanian script
Escritura albanocaucásica
- Date
- century V (tradición) · confidence low
- Place
- Qabala (Kabalaka), Azerbaijan
- Credited to
- According to tradition, Mesrop Mashtots (for the Caucasian Albanians)
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
An alphabet of 52 letters for the language of the Caucasian Albanians, a people of present-day Azerbaijan, whose church used it for liturgy and texts. It was known from Armenian sources and rediscovered in 1996 with the identification of a palimpsest at St Catherine's Monastery (Sinai).
The attribution to Mashtots comes from Koryun (5th century) and is questioned by part of the scholarship. The script is known from few inscriptions (Mingachevir) and the Sinai palimpsest, and the exact date of invention cannot be pinned down.
What it led to
- identification of modern Udi as a descendant of the Albanian language
- the history of a local Christian church in present-day Azerbaijan
- decipherment of the palimpsest in 1996-2009 by Zaza Aleksidze and Jost Gippert