Until recently the Georgian language was considered to be the only language among the Caucasian languages to have a lengthy documented history, back to the fifth century C. E. other Caucasian languages having been documented only since the nineteenth century. However, recent investigations by the Georgian scientist Zaza Aleksidze have estabilished that another Caucasian language, Albanian, also has documented texts from so far back as the fifth century C.E.

Linguists have got an opportunity to use data of the Albanian language in comparative studies of the Caucasian languages. Paleographists have got a complete picture of the Albanian alphabet, one among the original and unique alphabets in the world.

The Albanian language was a language spoken in the territory of the old Christian state Albany or Albania, that was situated in the territory of modern Azerbaijan and was known already before the adoption of Christianity. Nowadays, it is usually called Caucasian Albania in order to differentiate it from the Balkan Albania.

Albanian spoken in the Caucasus belonged to the Caucasian languages, in particular, to the Lezgian group of the North-East Caucasian languages. Among the languages spoken today, the closest related language of Albanian is Udi, spoken in some villages of Azerbaijan and Georgia.

On the 28th of September 1937 among the Armenian manuscripts, kept in Echmiadzin, Ilia Abuladze found a manual dated from the fifteenth century where along with the Greek, Latin, Georgian, Syrian and other alphabets, the Albanian alphabet was also represented. Akaki Shanidze has studied this manuscript and came to the conclusion that this alphabet was really Albanian and the closest relative of the Albanian sound system must be the sound system of the Udi language, belonging to the Daghestan (Lezgian) group of the North-East Caucasian languages. About ten years later, Albanian inscriptions were found in the territory of modern Azerbaijan and Daghestan, but they were so few that it became impossible to decipher them. Another problem was also caused by the fact that the Albanian alphabet known from the Armenian manuscript contained mistakes as it had been rewritten several times by scribers who did not know this script. The phonemic meaning of the Albanian graphemes were given by means of the Armenian alphabet. But the 36 Armenian graphemes with their 36 phonemic meanings could not reproduce the 52 phonemes and their corresponding 52 graphemes of Albanian.

On the 26th of may 1975 a collection of Georgian manuscripts were discovered on Mount Sinai in Palestine. Expeditions to Mount Sinai were arranged in 1990-2000 by the Institute of Manuscripts of the Georgian Academy of Sciences in order to study the collection. This turned out to be the decisive fact for the discovery and deciphering of the Albanian texts. In some palimpsests (manuscripts where the new text is written over the old text) the old text turned out to be Albanian.

Professor Zaza Aleksidze, director of the Kekelidze Institute of Manuscripts (Georgian Academy of Sciences) and organizer of the expeditions deciphered the texts and came to the conclusion that "two underlying texts of the palimpsests found on M. Sinai represent a monument or monuments of the lost literature of Caucasian Albania". The text is the oldest lectionary among the Christian lectionaries, preserved in the world.
 

Zaza Aleksidze, Discovery and decipherment of Gaucasian Albanian Writing  Link

Zaza Aleksidze, Preliminary Account on the Identification and Deciphering of the Caucasian Albanian Manuscript Discovered on the Mount Sinai: Link

Jost Gippert, Caucasian Albanian script

Udi and Udians Link