Kumyks - Language and Literacy

The tribes that played some role in the ethnogenesis of the Kumyks used the Caucasian Albanian and Runic scripts (to at least some extent). There is information to the effect that a writing system was created for the Daghestan Huns (the Sabirs or Savirs) by Byzantine-Armenian missionaries, and another, based on the Greek alphabet, in the Khazar period. From the eighth to the tenth centuries the Arabic script gradually spread to the area and was adapted (in the twentieth century) to the sound systems of the local languages ( ajam ) . In 1928 the Arabic script was supplanted by the Latin alphabet, and in 1938 by the Russian (Cyrillic).