Dagestanian

Dagestanian groups the languages of the Nakh-Daghestanian, or Northeast Caucasian, family, native to the eastern Caucasus, from Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia into northern Azerbaijan. Its members include Chechen and Ingush in the Nakh branch and Avar, Dargwa, Lak and Lezgin among the Dagestanian branches. Isolated by highland valleys, they diverged sharply and are noted for elaborate consonants and large case systems.

The earliest written member was Caucasian Albanian, whose fifty-two-letter alphabet was created in the early 400s for the church of Caucasian Albania and whose line survives in Udi. After that tradition died out, Armenian and Georgian served as literary media.

Avar was occasionally written in the Georgian alphabet from the 1300s, and Perso-Arabic ajam glosses appeared from the 1400s. Avar acted as the highlands' lingua franca beside the literary idioms of Lak, Dargwa and Lezgin.