Baron Pyotr Karlovich Uslar

7/31/2019 Baron Pyotr Karlovich Uslar

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Baron Pyotr Karlovich Uslar: Inventor of the First Abkhaz Alphabet

Stephen D. Shenfield | Special to Abkhaz World

Introduction

Prior to the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, Abkhaz and the other languages of the

mountain peoples existed only in oral form. They acquired writing systems as a delayed side

effect of the conquest. This process was initiated by Baron Pyotr (Peter) Karlovich Uslar1

(1816 1875), a military engineer who became a pioneer in European studies of the

Caucasus, especially the North Caucasus, and its peoples and languages.

I have been unable to locate any literature about Uslar in English. Historians of the Caucasus

may mention his name, but only in passing. There is, however, a substantial literature about

him in Russian that I have been able to use in preparing this article. Nevertheless, I have

only skimmed the surface of this literature. Uslar is clearly a key figure in the history of the

Caucasus and in the development of linguistics as well as Caucasus Studies. So a fuller

English-language account of his life and work should be made available.

After a brief description of Uslars background and military career, I show how he became

involved in study of history and languages of the Caucasus and discuss his work as a linguist

and educator. I append information about the first three Abkhaz alphabets.

Uslars background and military career

Like many other members of the tsarist military and administrative elite, Baron Pyotr Uslar

was of German origin. His grandfather, a native of Hanover, entered Russian military service

in 1765. The family was given a country estate by Alexander I in the village of Kurovo in Tver

province; it was later expanded to include two other villages. His father fought in the war

against Napoleon.

Pytor was the second oldest of seven children and the oldest of three brothers. As a young

child he had a German home tutor, who inspired him with a love of classical Latin. Later he

attended a grammar school in St. Petersburg and then the Chief Engineering College,

graduating as a military engineer.

Uslar began military service in 1837 in a sapper battalion in the Caucasian War. In 1839 he

took part in an expedition to southern Dagestan. Then he left the Caucasus to marry Sofia

Grabbe, the daughter of a general. In 1843 1844 he served in the Kyrgyz steppe (the

term then used for an area that is now mainly in Kazakhstan), describing the experience in

an essay that was published in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski(Fatherland Notes).

Uslars literary talent evidently impressed his superiors sufficiently for them to assign him

more intellectual tasks. In 1845 1849 he was busy compiling military-statistical

descriptions of his native Tver Province and then of Vologda Province. These were detailed

accounts of terrain, resources, population and economy, focusing on aspects of military


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significance. In 1849 he participated in suppressing the Hungarian uprising a favor

extended by the tsar to his fellow autocrat, the Austro-Hungarian emperor.

In 1850, after almost a decade away, Uslar returned to the Caucasus. He was to remain

there for most of the remaining 25 years of his life, leaving only to spend short periods on

his family estate, usually in the summer. His first assignment was to write another military-statistical description this time of Yerevan Province in Armenia.

2He served in various

places in the Caucasus (first Guri, then Kutaisi) and rose in the army hierarchy, reaching the

rank of major general in 1862.

Uslars studies of the history and languages of the Caucasus

In 1858 Uslar was given the task of writing a history of the Caucasus since ancient times. He

worked on this history for many years: it was finally published only after his death. But his

main interest was the languages of the region an interest that he reconciled with his

official status as a historian by arguing that a peoples language is the most reliable source

of information about its history.3

Uslar began his linguistic studies with the West Caucasian group of languages Circassian,

Ubykh and Abkhaz.4

However, he made only brief notes about Circassian and Ubykh, which

were published only after his death. He studied Abkhaz in much greater depth, starting in

Sukhum in 1861 and continuing in Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi) in 1862.

In 1862 Uslar also started to study Kabardinian, but in 1863 he settled in Dagestan, in the

village of Temir-Khan-Shure (now the town of Buinaksk), and embarked on the study of

several Dagestani languages. Over the course of the following decade, he studied in

succession Avar, Lak, Archin, Dargin, Lezgin and Tabasaran.5

In 1865 he visited Chechnya andstudied Chechen. In 1868 he was made a corresponding member of the Historical-

Philological Division of the Academy of Sciences.

Uslars main legacy as a linguist was a series of seven books that systematically described

the Abkhaz, Chechen, Avar, Lak, Dargin, Lezgin, and Tabasaran languages. Each book

contained an analysis of pronunciation, using an alphabet specially designed for the

language in question, an account of the languages grammar, vocabulary, and sample texts

in the form of proverbs, songs, and short stories.

As a creator of alphabets, Uslar might be compared to the Armenian monk Mesrop

Mashtots (c. 361 440), who also specially designed alphabets for a whole series oflanguages, including Georgian as well as Armenian itself.

Uslar as an educator

Uslar did not just study languages and create alphabets. He also undertook the first efforts

to establish schools to spread literacy among the mountain peoples. In all these activities,

he relied extensively on local indigenous informants and collaborators, some of whom

continued his work after he left a given area.

Thus, Uslars work on a Kabardinian alphabet was completed by Kazi Atazhukin, who issued

a Kabardinian spelling book in 1865. A Chechen spelling book was produced by Uslars


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Chechen collaborator Kedi Dosov. Also in 1865, another Chechen collaborator, the mullah

Yangulbai Khasanov, taught Chechen writing to 25 students in a temporary school in the

Grozny Fortress: it achieved its purpose in seven weeks, even though none of the students

had ever held a pen in his hand before.

Uslars Avar collaborator Aidemir Chirkeyevsky published a collection of Avar songs andstories in 1867, before fleeing to Turkey in 1871. Uslar also valued highly a Lezgin

collaborator by the name of Ganazfer.

A pioneer of modern linguistics

Russian scholars have called Uslar the spontaneous founder of the methodology of

linguistic field research. Although the basic concepts of modern linguistics had yet to be

formulated, Uslar intuitively invented research methods that would later be justified in

terms of those concepts. For example, although the very concept of phoneme a subset

of vocal sound that has distinct significance in a given language did not yet exist, Uslar

listened closely and patiently to native speakers until he fully grasped the phonemic

structure of their language. Uslar was able to overcome the Eurocentric assumptions of

nineteenth-century philology and adopt the more objective and analytical approach that

would characterize twentieth-century linguistics.

Much of Uslars literary legacy was long neglected. After his death in 1875, some of his

papers (rough notes, uncompleted manuscripts, etc.) ended up in the hands of his colleague

Academician Shifner, who made little use of them before himself dying in 1879. Other

papers were taken into the safekeeping of the Russian military administration of the

Caucasus. Only in 1953 did the linguist Alexander Magometov begin preparing Uslars

Tabasaran grammar for publication, and it was finally published with his annotations in 1979 over a century late!

The first three Abkhaz alphabets

The alphabet that Uslar created for Abkhaz in 1862 consisted of 37 letters. Most of these

were based on Cyrillic letters, with various diacritical marks and squibbles attached. But a

few Latin letters were included (h, i, j), and also the lower-case Greek letter nu (in two

variants).6

The second Abkhaz alphabet, created in 1909 by Alexei Chochua, was a modified and

expanded version of Uslars alphabet. It consisted of 55 letters, again mostly based onCyrillic letters but with a few Latin letters (I, q, h) and the Greek nu.

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The third Abkhaz alphabet was the so-called Abkhaz Analytical Alphabet of 77 letters,

devised by Academician Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr in 1926 on the basis of the Latin script

with abundant use of diacritical marks (and a few letters based on Cyrillic, e.g. sh).

Notes

1. Sometimes spelled Uzlar.

2. It was presumably as a result of this work that in 1851 he became a member of theCaucasian Section of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society.


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3. One example pertaining to the Caucasus that was already known by Uslars time

concerned the Ossets, whose language revealed their Iranian origin. Uslar also argued that

only the linguistic proximity between European and Indian languages in the Indo-European

family revealed the common origin of European and Indian peoples.

4. At this period he also made a brief study of Svan.

5. These are the names by which these languages are currently known; at that time some of

them were known by other names. Uslar studied Archin for a much shorter period than any

of the other languages, producing only a few notes.

6. Uslars alphabet as it appeared in a book published in 1888 is shown

athttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/:Abkhaz_Uslar_alphabet.JPG

7. Chochuas alphabet, as published in a 1925 textbook, is shown

athttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/:Abhaz_alphabet_chochua.JPG

References

Abkhazskaya pismennost.http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/_

Ganich, Anastasia Alexeyevna, Musulmanskoe prosveshchenie v Kabarde vo vtoroi polovine

XIX v. http://www.central-eurasia.com/kabardino-balkariya/?uid=120

Uslar, Pyotr Karlovich.http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/,__

Vorobyov, Vyacheslav. Tverskoi dvorianin sozdatel chechenskogo

alfavita. http://www.tverlife.ru/news/49796.html

Zagurskii, L.P. Pyotr Karlovich Uslar i ego deiatelnost na Kavkaze. Sbornik svedenii o

kavkazskikh gortsakh. Vypusk

X(1881).http://www.abkhazworld.com/Pdf/SSKG_1876_10.pdf

http://abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/art-a-literature/854-baron-pyotr-karlovich-uslar-inventor-of-the-

first-abkhaz-alphabet-by-stephen-d-shenfield.html
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Abkhaz_Uslar_alphabet.JPGhttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Abkhaz_Uslar_alphabet.JPGhttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Abkhaz_Uslar_alphabet.JPGhttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Abhaz_alphabet_chochua.JPGhttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Abhaz_alphabet_chochua.JPGhttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Abhaz_alphabet_chochua.JPGhttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%B1%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B7%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8Chttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%B1%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B7%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8Chttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%B1%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B7%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8Chttp://www.central-eurasia.com/kabardino-balkariya/?uid=120http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%80,_%D0%9F%D1%91%D1%82%D1%80_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%80,_%D0%9F%D1%91%D1%82%D1%80_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%80,_%D0%9F%D1%91%D1%82%D1%80_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87http://www.tverlife.ru/news/49796.htmlhttp://abkhazworld.com/Pdf/SSKG_1876_10.pdfhttp://abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/art-a-literature/854-baron-pyotr-karlovich-uslar-inventor-of-the-first-abkhaz-alphabet-by-stephen-d-shenfield.htmlhttp://abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/art-a-literature/854-baron-pyotr-karlovich-uslar-inventor-of-the-first-abkhaz-alphabet-by-stephen-d-shenfield.htmlhttp://abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/art-a-literature/854-baron-pyotr-karlovich-uslar-inventor-of-the-first-abkhaz-alphabet-by-stephen-d-shenfield.htmlhttp://abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/art-a-literature/854-baron-pyotr-karlovich-uslar-inventor-of-the-first-abkhaz-alphabet-by-stephen-d-shenfield.htmlhttp://abkhazworld.com/abkhazia/art-a-literature/854-baron-pyotr-karlovich-uslar-inventor-of-the-first-abkhaz-alphabet-by-stephen-d-shenfield.htmlhttp://abkhazworld.com/Pdf/SSKG_1876_10.pdfhttp://www.tverlife.ru/news/49796.htmlhttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%80,_%D0%9F%D1%91%D1%82%D1%80_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87http://www.central-eurasia.com/kabardino-balkariya/?uid=120http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%B1%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B7%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8Chttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Abhaz_alphabet_chochua.JPGhttp://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Abkhaz_Uslar_alphabet.JPG

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Baron Pyotr Karlovich Uslar