Lap) and its boundaries reach from Vlorë to Himara in the south, to the Greek border near Sarandë, incorporating the Kurvelesh region of Gjirokastër District and extending east to the city of Tepelenë.

The variant lab-, which goes back to *alb-, resulted from a metathesis characteristic of Common Slavic, and was reborrowed in that form into Albanian.

[2] The link to the older form of the toponym was preserved until the late Ottoman period as suggested in documents of the court of Ali Pasha of Tepelena and other publications.

[4] In Ottoman times, the region became known as Laplık in Turkish, comprising the areas of Delvinë, Avlonya (Vlorë), Tepedelen (Tepelenë), Kurules (Kurvelesh), and Ergiri (Gjirokastër).

[6] In the Middle Ages the Labs were followers of the Eastern Orthodox Church but many converted to Islam during Ottoman rule, with the bulk of conversion occurring in the 18th century.

The Labs were warlike pastoral people who lived mainly in the mountains of Kurvelesh, Progonat and Vlorë during the Byzantine period and the Ottoman invasion of Albania.

However, due to mass migrations to urban areas following World War II, the population is now concentrated in the cities of Vlorë, Tepelenë, Gjirokastër and Sarandë.

[12][13][14] This set of traditional unwritten laws which survived Byzantine and Ottoman periods in the isolated and inaccessible territories of southwest Albania.

Literary evidence by Greek historian Aravatinos records that they converted to Islam at a time of great famine during the Ottoman period.