Alphabets of Identity: Sacred Scripts of the Caucasus and Mesopotamia

The landscapes of the Caucasus and Mesopotamia are not only mountains, rivers, and plains—they are landscapes of memory, carved in stone and ink, carried on parchment and paper, etched into the very identity of the peoples who have lived there. In these crossroads of civilizations, alphabets are not just technical tools for communication; they are sacred vessels of history, symbols of endurance, and emblems of cultural belonging. To follow the path of the scripts of this region is to follow the story of how communities have preserved their faith, their stories, and their very sense of who they are.

The Georgian script, for instance, is unlike any other in the world. It stands outside the family of Latin, Greek, or Aramaic-derived scripts, as if it were invented purely to give voice to a people surrounded by empires yet determined to keep their own path. Tradition holds that King Pharnavaz created the first Georgian alphabet in the 4th century BC, and though its exact origins remain shrouded in mystery. Its three forms—Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri, and Mkhedruli—each carry their own history. Monks used the rounded, monumental Asomtavruli in sacred inscriptions, while Mkhedruli, the graceful script still used today, weaves itself through poetry, politics, and prayers. For Georgians, to write in their alphabet is not simply to record words—it is to honor centuries of survival. Even today, the elegant curve of each letter reflects a sacred artistry, originally designed for carving prayers into stone church walls that still stand.

A fragment of Ananuri Monastery’s wall inscribed with Georgian text, glimpsed during our journey to the Georgian Mountains

The Armenian alphabet, created by the visionary monk Mesrop Mashtots in the early 5th century, carries a similar sacrality. Mashtots was not only giving his people a tool to read the Bible; he was giving them a way to remain Armenian in an era of foreign domination. His creation was greeted by Armenians as a divine gift. There is a legend that he received inspiration for the letters through a vision, where the script was revealed as a heavenly tool to preserve the language of his people. Today, Armenians see their alphabet as the heart of their cultural identity. In the diaspora, far from their ancestral homeland, Armenian letters serve as an anchor of belonging. Each character is not only a sound but a reminder of centuries of resilience, poetry, scholarship, and prayer.

A page from an Armenian manuscript, displayed at the Matenadaran Museum, explored during our Yerevan tour.

Further south and west, the Latin script became a symbol of modernization in the 20th century. When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk decreed in 1928 that Turkey would abandon the Arabic script of the Ottomans in favor of Latin letters, it was not only a reform in literacy but a cultural revolution. Suddenly, a whole generation had to relearn how to read and write, severing ties with centuries of Ottoman texts. In Azerbaijan too, the Latin script became a symbol of shifting identities. First adopted in the 1920s, then replaced by Cyrillic during the Soviet era, it was reintroduced after independence in the 1990s. The alphabet became a political choice: to write Azeri in Latin was to declare alignment with the West, with independence, with a new era of identity after Soviet rule. For both Turks and Azeris, Latin letters were not merely symbols of sounds—they were symbols of orientation, of turning one’s face toward Europe and away from older imperial legacies.

The Cyrillic script, introduced into the Caucasus during the Soviet period, tells a story of political control as much as of linguistic adaptation. From the 1930s onward, Cyrillic alphabets were imposed on numerous languages in the region, including Abkhazian, Ossetian, Chechen, and others. This was part of a broader process of Russification, where language policy served as a tool of integration into the Soviet system. While Cyrillic provided a standardized way to write these languages, its adoption also marked a shift in cultural orientation, often at the expense of older writing traditions. Today, Cyrillic remains in use across parts of the Caucasus, carrying with it both the legacy of Soviet influence and the resilience of local tongues that continue to be written, spoken, and cherished.

The Greek script, though less central to the Caucasus and Mesopotamia themselves, still left its traces in the region. Greek merchants, missionaries, and diasporic communities carried their alphabet into the mountains and valleys of the Caucasus. In cities like Batumi, Mtskheta and Trabzon, inscriptions in Greek reveal the life of communities that thrived there for centuries. For these diasporic Greeks, the alphabet was the thread that connected them back to their ancestral lands, an unbroken line of identity in the midst of foreign surroundings.

The gate of Mor Gabriel Monastery, adorned with Syriac inscription, visited on our Turkish Mesopotamian tour

If Greek brought echoes of the classical world, Syriac was the living breath of Mesopotamia’s Christianity. Derived from the Aramaic script, Syriac became the script of saints and scholars, carrying the prayers of early Christian communities. It was written in three flowing forms—Estrangela, Serto, and East Syriac—but always with a sacred grace. Syriac monasteries preserved not only theological works but also translations of Greek philosophy and science, later passed into Arabic and then Latin, making Syriac script one of the unsung heroes of global intellectual history. Even today, for Syriac Christians in Iraq, Syria, and the diaspora, to see the script in church books or carved into a cross is to feel the weight of history and the presence of the sacred.

Lalish, the main shrine of the Yezidis in Iraqi Kurdistan and one of the highlights of our tour, features an Arabic inscription above its entrance, while the community is now reviving their ancient script once used in sacred texts.

Among the Yezidis, who trace their spiritual traditions to the northern Mesopotamian heartlands, the question of script has been deeply tied to survival. For centuries, Kurmanji (the Northern Kurdish language) used different scripts, starting from Arabic and Cyrilic often under the pressure of dominant empires to most widely common now - Bedirxan's Latin alphabet. But in recent years, Yezidis have revived their own script, inspired by ancient alphabets and adapted for their sacred hymns and community use. To write in the Yezidi alphabet is an act of cultural self-preservation, a way of declaring that their traditions, too often threatened, will not vanish. It has become a sacred emblem of identity, carrying not only words but the hope of continuity.

Across the Caucasus and Mesopotamia, alphabets are never neutral. They are sacred guardians of memory, visible threads that tie people to their ancestors, their prayers, and their stories. Whether carved into the walls of a Georgian church, illuminated in an Armenian gospel, printed in a Turkish newspaper, or whispered in an Aramaic prayer, these scripts are living witnesses. They carry the struggles of survival, the joy of song, the solemnity of prayer, and the pride of identity. To walk through this region is to walk among alphabets, each one alive with meaning, each one testifying that peoples may be conquered, displaced, or scattered, but as long as they write in their own script, they remain themselves.