Old Permic alphabet
| Old Permic or Abur |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Type |
alphabet
|
| Languages | Komi |
|
Time period
|
1372–17th century |
|
Parent systems
|
|
| Direction | Left-to-right |
| ISO 15924 | Perm, 227 |
|
Unicode alias
|
Old Permic |
| Final Accepted Script Proposal | |
The Old Permic script (Komi: Важ Перым гижӧм), sometimes called Abur or Anbur, is a "highly idiosyncratic adaptation" of the Cyrillic script once used to write medieval Komi (Permic).
The alphabet was introduced by a Russian missionary, Stepan Khrap, also known as Saint Stephen of Perm (Степан Храп, св. Стефан Пермский) in 1372. The name Abur is derived from the names of the first two characters: An and Bur. The alphabet derived from Cyrillic and Greek, and Komi "Tamga" signs, the latter being similar in the appearance to runes or siglas poveiras, because they were created by incisions, rather than by usual writing. The inclusion of the latter aided the alphabet in greater acceptance among the medieval Permic speakers of the time.
The alphabet was in use until the 17th century, when it was superseded by the Cyrillic script. Abur was also used as cryptographic writing for the Russian language.
April 26, which is the saint's day of Stephen of Perm, is celebrated as Old Permic Alphabet Day.
The Abur inscriptions are among the oldest relics of the Uralic languages. Only one of them has earlier documents: Hungarian, which had been written using the Old Hungarian script first before the Latin script was used after 1000.
For comparison, Finnish as a written language appeared only after the Reformation in 1543. However, an isolated birch bark letter, found in 1957 in Novgorod and written in a Finnic language, has been dated to the beginning of the 13th century.
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Wikipedia