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Albania (Latin: Albānia, Greek: Ἀλβανία, Albanía,[5] in Old Armenian: Աղուանք Ałuankʿ (Aguank),[6] Parthian: Ardhan, Middle Persian: Arran; usually referred to as Caucasian Albania for disambiguation with the modern state of Albania; the native name for the country is unknown[7][8]) is a name for the historical region of the eastern Caucasus, that existed on the territory of present-day republic of Azerbaijan (where both of its capitals were located) and partially southern Dagestan. After the rise of the Parthian Empire the kings of Caucasian Albania were replaced with a Arsacid family and would later be succeeded by another Iranian royal family in the 5th century AD, the Mihranids. In pre-Islamic times, Caucasian Albania/Arran was a wider concept than that of post-Islamic Arran. Ancient Arran covered all eastern Transcaucasia, which included most of the territory of modern day Azerbaijan Republic and part of the territory of Dagestan. However in post-Islamic times the geographic notion of Arran reduced to the territory between the rivers of Kura and Araks.[8] Ancient Caucasian Albania lay on the south-eastern part of the Greater Caucasus mountains. It was bounded by Caucasian Iberia (present-day Georgia) to the west, by Sarmatia to the north, by the Caspian Sea to the east, and by the provinces of Artsakh and Utik in Armenia to the west along the river Kura.[18] These boundaries, though, were probably never static - At times the territory of Caucasian Albania included land to the west of the river Kura.[19] Albania or Arran in Islamic times was a triangle of land, lowland in the east and mountainous in the west, formed by the junction of the Kura and Aras rivers,[8] including the highland and lowland Karabakh[8] (Artsakh),[20][dubious – discuss] Mil plain and parts of the Mughan plain, and in the pre-Islamic times, corresponded roughly to the territory of modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan. According to Armenian medieval historians Movses Khorenatsi, Movses Kaghankatvatsi and Koryun, the Caucasian Albanian (the Armenian name for the language is Aghvank, the native name of the language is unknown) alphabet was created by Mesrob Mashtots,[33][34][35] the Armenian monk, theologian and translator who is also credited with creating the Armenian and Georgian alphabets.[36] This alphabet was used to write down the Udi language, which was probably the main language of the Caucasian Albanians. Koryun, a pupil of Mesrob Mashtots, in his book The Life of Mashtots, wrote about how his tutor created the alphabet: Then there came and visited them an elderly man, an Albanian named Benjamin. And he (Mesrob Mashtots) inquired and examined the barbaric diction of the Albanian language, and then through his usual God-given keenness of mind invented an alphabet, which he, through the grace of Christ, successfully organized and put in order.[37] A column capital of a 7th-century Christian church with an inscription in Caucasian Albanian, found in Mingachevir.[38] The column capital is now kept on display at Azerbaijan State Museum of History. A Caucasian Albanian alphabet of fifty-two letters, bearing resemblance to Georgian, Ethiopian and Armenian characters,[39] survived through a few inscriptions, and an Armenian manuscript dating from the 15th century.[40] This manuscript, Matenadaran No. 7117, first published by Ilia Abuladze in 1937 is a language manual, presenting different alphabets for comparison – Armenian, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, and Caucasian Albanian among them. The alphabet was titled: "Ałuanicʿ girn ē" (Armenian: Աղուանից գիրն Է, meaning, "These are Albanian letters"). In 1996, Zaza Aleksidze of the Georgian Centre of Manuscripts discovered at Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai, Egypt, a text written on parchment that had been reused in a Georgian palimpsest. In 2001 Aleksidze identified its script as Caucasian Albanian, and the text as an early lectionary dating to perhaps before the 6th century. Many of the letters discovered in it were not in the Albanian alphabet listed in the 15th-century Armenian manuscript.[41] Muslim geographers Al-Muqaddasi, Ibn-Hawqal and Estakhri recorded that a language which they called Arranian was still spoken in the capital Barda and the rest of Arran in the 10th century.