Lazs

The Laz people, or Lazi ( ''Lazi''; ka, ლაზი, ''lazi''; or ჭანი, ''ch'ani''; ), are a Kartvelian ethnic group native to the South Caucasus, who mainly live in Black Sea coastal regions of Turkey and Georgia. They traditionally speak the Laz language (which is a member of the Kartvelian language family) but have experienced a rapid language shift to Turkish.

Of the 103,900 ethnic Laz in Turkey, only around 20,000 speak Laz and the language is classified as threatened (6b) in Turkey and shifting (7) in Georgia on the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale.

Etymology

The ancestors of the Laz people are cited by many classical authors from Scylax to Procopius and Agathias, but the word Lazi in Latin language () themselves are firstly cited by Pliny around the 2nd century BC.

Identity

Self-Identification

Vladimir Minorsky, Russian scholar of Oriental studies, argued in 1913 that the Laz living in Turkey and Georgia have developed different understandings of what it means to be Laz as their identity in Georgia has largely merged with a Georgian identity with the meaning of "Laz" being seen as merely a regional category.

Identification by non-Laz

In a stereotyping manner, non-Laz often use the exonym ''Laz'' for groups that are mostly not ethnic Laz:
#In Turkey, the term Laz is a 'folk' definition and exonym for anyone originating in the eastern Black Sea coast of Turkey. Sometimes, the term is extended to the western portion of the coast as well. Therefore, this term is often used mostly for ethnic Pontic Greeks, Turks, Hemshins in addition to Laz in Turkey.
#The residents of the northwestern portion of the Gümüşhane are viewed as Laz by other people from Gümüşhane.
#The residents of Posof are named as Laz by neighboring communities.
# Pontic Greeks are seen as Laz by other Greeks.
#People from İspir and the Hemshins of Erzurum are thought to be Laz by other people from Erzurum.
#The Pontic Greek-speakers from the villages of Emek and Dönerdere in Van are called as Laz by the neighboring communities.
#A small community living in the Caspian coast of Iran is called as Laz.

History

Origins

The Lazuri-speaking ancestors of the modern Laz originally hailed from the northeast, around Abkhazia and Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti and settled in the present homeland of the Laz in antiquity.

Modern theories suggest that the Colchian tribes are direct ancestors of the Laz- Mingrelians, they constituted the dominant ethnic and cultural presence in the south-eastern Black Sea region in antiquity, and hence played a significant role in the ethnogenesis of the modern Georgians.

Antiquity

In the thirteenth century BC, the Kingdom of Colchis was formed as a result of the increasing consolidation of the tribes inhabiting the region, which covered modern western Georgia and Turkey's north-eastern provinces of Trabzon, Rize and Artvin. Colchis was an important region in Black Sea trade – rich with gold, wax, hemp, and honey. In the eighth century, several Greek trading colonies were established along the shores of the Black Sea, one of them being Trebizond () founded by Milesian traders from Sinope in 756 BC. Trebizond's trade partners included the Proto-Laz tribes of Mossynoeci.

By the sixth century BC, the tribes living in the southern Colchis ( Macrones, Mossynoeci, Marres etc.) were incorporated into the nineteenth satrapy of Persia. The Achaemenid Empire was defeated by Alexander the Great, however following the Alexander's death a number of separate kingdoms were established in Anatolia, including Pontus, in the corner of the southern Black Sea, ruled by the Persian nobleman Mithridates I. Culturally, the kingdom was Hellenized, with Greek as the official language. Mithridates VI conquered the Colchis, and gave it to his son Mithridates of Colchis.

As a result of the Roman campaigns between 88 and 63 BC, led by the generals Pompey and Lucullus, the kingdom of Pontus was completely destroyed by the Romans and all its territory, including Colchis, was incorporated into the Roman Empire. The former southern provinces of Colchis were reorganized into the Roman province of Pontus Polemoniacus, while the northern Cholchis became the Roman province of Lazicum. Roman control remained likewise only nominal over the tribes of the interior..

The first-century historians Memnon and Strabo remark in passing that the people formerly called Macrones bore in his day the name of Sanni, a claim supported also by Stephanus of Byzantium. The second-century historian Arrian notes that Tzanni, same as the Sanni are neighbours of the Colchians, while the latter were now referred to as the Lazi. By the mid-third century, the Lazi tribe came to dominate most of Colchis, establishing the kingdom of Lazica.

Middle Ages

The warlike tribes of the Chaldia, called Tzanni, the ancestors of modern Laz people lived in ''Tzanica'', the area located between the Byzantine and the Lazica. It included several settlements named: Athenae, Archabis and Apsarus; Tzanni were neither subjects of the Romans nor of the king of the Lazica, except that during the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) they were subdued, Christianized and brought to central rule. The bishops of Lazica appointed the priests of the Tzanni, given they were now Christians. Tzanni began to have closer contact with the Greeks and acquired various Hellenic cultural traits, including in some cases the language.

From 542 to 562, Lazica was a scene of the protracted rivalry between the Eastern Roman and Sassanid empires, culminating in the Lazic War, where 1,000 Tzanni auxiliaries under Dagisthaeus participated. Emperor Heraclius's offensive in 628 AD brought victory over the Persians and ensured Roman predominance in Lazica until the invasion and conquest of the Caucasus by the Arabs in the second half of the seventh century. As the result of Muslim invasions, the ancient metropolis, Phasis, was lost and Trebizond became the new Metropolitan see of Lazica, since then the name Lazi appears the general Greek name for Tzanni. According to Geography of Anania Shirakatsi of the 7th century, Colchis (''Yeger'' in Armenian sources, synonymous with Lazica) was subdivided into four small districts, one of them being Tzanica, that is Chaldia, and mentions Athinae, Rhizus and Trebizond among its cities. From the second half of the eight century the Trebizond area is referred to in Greek sources (namely of Epiphanius of Constantinople) as Lazica. The 10th-century Arab geographer Abul Feda regarded the city of Trebizond as being largely a Lazian port.

In 780, the m kingdom of Abkhazia incorporated the former territories of Lazica via a dynastic succession, thus ousting the Pontic Lazs (formerly known as Tzanni) from western Georgia; thereafter, the Tzanni lived under nominal Byzantine suzerainty in the theme of Chaldia, with its capital at Trebizond, governed by the native semi-autonomous rulers, like the Gabras family,Hewsen, 47 of possibly "Greco-Laz" or simply Chaldian origin.

With the Georgian intervention in Chaldia and the collapse of Byzantine Empire in 1204, Empire of Trebizond was established along the southeastern coast of the Black Sea, populated by a large Kartvelian-speaking population.Mikaberidze, A. (2015). Historical dictionary of Georgia. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD, United States: ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD, p.634. In the eastern part of the same empire, an autonomous coastal theme of Greater Lazia was established. Byzantine authors, such as Pachymeres, and to some extent Trapezuntines such as Lazaropoulos and Bessarion, regarded the Trapezuntian Empire as being no more than a Lazian border state. Though Greek in higher culture, the rural areas of Trebizond empire appear to have been predominantly Laz in ethnic composition. Laz family names, with Hellenized terminations, are noticeable in the records of the mediaeval empire of Trebizond, and it is perhaps not too venturesome to suggest that the antagonism between the "town-party" and the "country-party," which existed in the politics of "the Empire," was in fact a national antagonism of Laz against Greek.

In 1282, the kingdom of Imereti besieged Trebizond, however after the failed attempt to take the city, the Georgians occupied several provinces,Miller, ''Trebizond'', p. 30 and all the Trebizontine province of Lazia threw off its allegiance to the king of the 'Iberian' and 'Lazian' tribes and united itself with the Georgian Kingdom of Imereti.

Early Modern era

Laz populated area was often contested by different Georgian principalities, however through Battle of Murjakheti in 1535, Principality of Guria ensured control over it, until 1547, when it was finally conquered by resurgent Ottoman forces and reorganized into the Lazistan sanjak as part of eyalet of Trabzon.

The Ottomans fought for three centuries to destroy the Christian-Georgian consciousness of the Laz people. Due to the Ottoman Islamization policy, throughout of seventeenth century Lazs gradually converted to Islam. As the Ottomans consolidated their rule, the Millet system was brought to the newly conquered territories. Local orthodox inhabitants, once subordinated to the Georgian Orthodox Church, had to obey Patriarchate of Constantinople,ქართველთა დენაციონალიზაცია XVII-XX საუკუნეებში; ლაზეთი-თრიალეთი (ქართველთა გაბერძნება)
Metropolitan of Manglisi, Ananias Japaridze, nplg.gov.ge thus gradually becoming Greeks, the process known as Hellenization of Laz people. Lazs who were under the control of Constantinople, soon lost their language and self-identity as they became Greeks and learned Greek, especially Pontic dialect of Greek language, although native language was preserved by Lazs who had become Muslims. In the middle of the seventeen century, several governors of Tunis, who bore the title of Dey were Laz origin, such as: Muhammad Laz (1647-1653), Mustafa Laz (1653-1665) and Ali Laz (1673).

Not only the Pashas (governors) of Trabzon until the 19th century, but real authority in many of the '' cazas'' (districts) of each sanjak by the mid-17th century lay in the hands of relatively independent native Laz derebeys ("valley-lords"), or feudal chiefs who exercised absolute authority in their own districts, carried on petty warfare with each other, did not owe allegiance to a superior and never paid contributions to the sultan. In the period following the war of 1828–1829, Sultan Mahmud II attempted to break the power of the great independent derebeys of Lazistan. In the event, the Laz derebeys, led by Tahir Ağa Tuzcuoğlu of Rize, did rise in revolt in 1832. The revolt was initially successful: at its height in January 1833, but by the spring of 1834, the rising had been put down. The suppression of the rising had finally broken the power of the Laz derebeys. This state of insubordination was not really broken until the assertion of Ottoman authority during the reforms of the Osman Pasha in the 1850s.

In 1547, Ottomans built coastal fortress of Gonia, an important Ottoman outpost in southwestern Georgia, which served as capital of Lazistan; then Batum until it was acquired according to the Congress of Berlin by the Russians in 1878, throughout the Russo-Turkish War, thereafter, Rize became the capital of the sanjak. The Muslim Lazs living in newly established Batumi Oblast were subjected to ethnic cleansing; by 1882, approximately 40,000 Lazs had settled in the Ottoman Empire, especially to provinces in Western Anatolia such as Bursa, Yalova

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