Unknown manuscript of Khanmeti Gospel

The Georgian Palimpsest preserved at the Makhachkala Institute of History, Ethnography and Archeology in the capital of Dagestan became known to the general public in 2016 as a result of a lecture read by a researcher of the same institute, Shahban Hafizov at Tbilisi State University. On the basis of this talk and the two photos provided to Teimuraz Gvantseladze by a Dagestani scholar, Teimuraz Gvantseladze co-authored a paper that identified the palimpsest as a text containing the Khanmeti Gospel and dated it to 7th-8th centuries. In 2018, within the framework of an expedition organized by the National Center of Manuscripts, I had the opportunity to work on the palimpsest preserved in Dagestan.
The analysis of the manuscript and a full transcription of the palimpsest text led me to the following conclusion: The upper layer of the 83-page Arabic-Georgian palimpsest containing the Sufi text is dated by Dagestani colleagues to no later than the 17th century, the manuscript had been moved to Makhachkala from the Laki district village of Ubri in the 60s of the last century. One page of the Arabic manuscript represents ¼ of the Georgian manuscript; therefore, we have fourteen full folios of the Georgian manuscript, thirteen half folios and also ¼ of one page (40, 41, 42 pages of the manuscript are indecipherable). The surviving margins on some pages of the manuscript allowed us to reconstruct the original page size of the Georgian manuscript. Its size must have been 340x210 mm.
The Georgian text is executed with a refined Asomtavruli – B, Q, Š, W, Ž graphemes are concise, which confirms the early dating of the manuscript. The copying of the palimpsest confirmed that we have a hitherto unknown manuscript of the Khanmeti Gospel.
Excerpts from the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John are present in the Palimpsest (Mark: 7:14-15, 7:18, 7:20, 7:22-24; 11:28-33; 12: 1-5, 12: 25-33; 12: 42-13:1-8; 14:2-11, 14:43-44,14:47, 14:49, 14:62, 14:63, 14:67-68, 14:70-71; 15: 46-47, 47-16:1; 16:1-4, 16:6, 16:7. Luke: 6:9-10, 6:12, 6:14-15, 6:17-21, 6:23, 6:25, 6:27, 6:29-33, 6:42, 6:45-46, 6:48, 6: 49; 7:1-3, 7:6; 7:33-50; 8: 1-16; 8: 18; 8: 20-21; 8: 23; 8: 24; 8: 25; 8: 26-33; 8: 52; 8: 55; 9: 1-2, 9: 5, 9: 7-13, 9: 14, 9: 16-19, 9: 22-23, 33-42. John: 2:23-24, 3:1-5, 3:7-16). The textual study of the Gospels and its comparison with the early manuscripts containing the proto-Vulgate have shown that the Arabic-Georgian palimpsest has preserved the texts from the Adishi edition of Khanmeti Gospel. In addition, the palimpsest has preserved the part of the Luke’s Gospel, which due to the damage of the original text, has been filled with the texts from other version of the Gospels by the copyist of the Adishi manuscript and this very fragments shows different and very interesting translation of the Luke's Gospels text.
Based on our observations, in the texts that have already been copied and identified, khanmetoba has no irregularities although a detailed study of the texts may disclose a different picture. Currently, the manuscript is dated to the 5th-6th cc.