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NON-SEMITIC OFFSHOOTS OF ARAMAIC BRANCH This people, of uncertain ethnic origin, lived in the Caucasus, now the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan; they were quite important anciently, especially during the wars between Rome and Mithridates of Pontus. They developed a rich literature between the fifth and eleventh centuries A.D., but at the end of that period they disappeared as an ethnic entity. According to some scholars, Caucasian Albanian still survives in the Udi language, spoken in the villages of Vartashen and Nish in the district of Nukha to the north of the river Kuror Kuma
Many ancient and modern savants dare to connect the Albanians of the Balkans with the Caucasian Albanians.
No original Alban documents are extant; until recently it seemed as though twenty-one Alban letters (Fig. 152, 1) were reproduced in an Armenian manuscript of the sixteenth century. (See Karamianz, Einundenanzig Buchstaben eines verlorenen Alphabets, in "ZEITSCHRIFT DER DEUTSCHEN MORGENLÆNDISCHEN GESELLSCHAFT," XL, 1886, pp. 315 sq). Professor A. Shanidze, however, shews that Karamianz's is merely queerly written Armenian. On the other hand, Shanidze thinks that a potsherd from Old Ganja may contain an Albanian inscription; see The Newly Discovered Alphabet of the Caucasian Albanians and its Significance for Science, "BULL OF THE MARR INSTITUTE OF LANGUAGES, HISTORY, ETC.," published by the Academy of Sciences of the Georgian Soviet Republic, Tiflis, Vol. IV, 1938 in Russian, with summaries in Georgian and French). However, Professor H. W. Bailey points out (Caucasica, "JOURN. OF THE Roy. Astat. Soc.", 1943, p. 4), that the published photograph is not clear enough to permit of comparison."
Professor Bailey mentions also I. Abuladze's article, On the Discovery of the Alphabet of the Caucasian Albanians, which appeared in the same Bulletin of the Marr Institute. Abuladze publishes "the lost alphabet which he found in an Armenian manuscript of the fifteenth century A.D., containing a miscellaneous collection of the Greek, Syriac, Latin, Georgian, Coptic, Arabic and Albanian alphabets." "Under each letter of the Albanian alphabet its name was written in Armenian script."
This manucsript is now at Etchmiadzin (No. 7117). The Albanian alphabet seems to consists of 32 letters, of which 29 are considered as indigernes, 12 as borrowed from the Armenian alphabet, 8 from Khutsuri, and 3 from Greek.
Sir Ellis H. Minns informs me that the MS. in question "has tables of Greek, Syriac, Latin, Georgian, Albanian, Coptic alphabets, and Indian and Arabic cyphers with Armenian transcriptions. There are mistakes, but the alphabets are genuine. Therefore, the Albanian with 52 letters is possibly genuine": see Fig. 152, 2. (I owe the photograph of this illustration to the kindness of Professor Bailey.)
On the Caucasian Albanians see also G. Dumézil, Une chrétiente disparue-les Albanais du Caucase. "MÉLANGES ASIATIQUES," I, 1940-1, and Journal Asiatique, 1940.
