By the middle of the 1st millennium B.C., an alliance of 26 tribes was formed in the eastern Transcaucasus (at present, the territory of Azerbaijan). They formed the polyethnic kingdom of Caucasian Albania, which in the 4th century A.D. adopted Christianity as its state religion. Parts of the Bible were translated into the Caucasian Albanian, or Agwan, language, which belonged to the Lezgic language family. However, this translation was lost during the early Medieval period, and parts of it were discovered only in recent times. In the 12-17th centuries Islam came to dominate in the region, so nowadays the Lezgic peoples are mainly Muslim. They practice folk Islam, but traces of their Christian past are still noticeable, and in folklore traditions one can still find traces of ancient paganism...
The Institute for Bible Translation has published the New Testament in the Lezgi language with an official stamp of approval from the Institute of Linguistics at the Russian Academy of Sciences. This marks the completion of many years of work by talented Lezgi writers and poets, theologians, and scholars of the Lezgi language, including Dr. B. B. Talibov, Dr. M. E. Alekseyev, Dr. N. A. Abdulgamidov, Dr. Marianne Beerle-Moore, and others.
IBT has recently published the Four Gospels in the Lezgi language. There are over 400,000 Lezgi speakers in the Russian Federation, most of whom live in south Dagestan near the border with Azerbaijan. More than 350,000 Lezgis also live in Azerbaijan, as well as in Turkey, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
By the middle of the 1st millennium B.C., an alliance of 26 tribes was formed in the eastern Transcaucasus (at present, the territory of Azerbaijan). They formed the polyethnic kingdom of Caucasian Albania, which in the 4th century A.D. adopted Christianity as its state religion. Parts of the Bible were translated into the Caucasian Albanian, or Agwan, language, which belonged to the Lezgic language family. However, this translation was lost during the early Medieval period, and parts of it were discovered only in recent times. In the 12-17th centuries Islam came to dominate in the region, so nowadays the Lezgic peoples are mainly Muslim. They practice folk Islam, but traces of their Christian past are still noticeable, and in folklore traditions one can still find traces of ancient paganism...
