[11] In the thirteenth century BC,[12][13] 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.

[citation needed] By the sixth century BC, the tribes living in the southern Colchis (Macrones, Mossynoeci, Marres etc.)

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,[14] with Greek as the official language.

[16] 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.

[citation needed] 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.

Tzanni began to have closer contact with the Greeks and acquired various Hellenic cultural traits, including in some cases the language.

[citation needed] 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.

According to Geography of Anania Shirakatsi of the 7th century,[20] 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.

[citation needed] 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,[21] of possibly "Greco-Laz" or simply Chaldian origin.

[24] 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.

[25] Though Greek in higher culture, the rural areas of Trebizond empire appear to have been predominantly Laz in ethnic composition.

[citation needed] 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.

Trabzon : OfAnatolia: Karamürsel in Kocaeli, Akçakoca in Düzce, Sakarya, Zonguldak, Bartın, Istanbul and Ankara Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti: Zugdidi and Anaklia.

[41] The traditional Laz economy was based on agriculture—carried out with some difficulty in the steep mountain regions and also on the breeding of sheep, goats, and cattle.

[40][43] The Laz community successfully lobbied Turkey's Education Ministry to offer Laz-language instruction in schools around the Black Sea region.

[44] Lazuri is a complex and morphologically rich tongue belonging to the South Caucasian language family whose other members are Mingrelian, Svan and Georgian.

The first attempts at establishing a distinct Laz cultural identity and creating a literary language based on the Arabic alphabet was made by Faik Efendisi in the 1870s, but he was soon imprisoned by the Ottoman authorities, while most of his works were destroyed.

A few native poets in Turkey including Raşid Hilmi Pehlivanoğlu, a well- known figure in Rize district, have appeared later in the 20th century.

[51][52] There are several ruined churches in present-day Rize and Artvin districts, such as; Jibistasi in Ardeşen, Makriali (Noghedi) in Hopa, Pironity in Arhavi etc.

[53] Famous for its saga and myths and bounded by the Black Sea and the Caucasian Mountains, the ancient region of Colchis spreads out from West Georgia to Northeast Turkey.

The national instruments include guda (bagpipe), kemenche (spike fiddle), zurna (oboe), and doli (drum).

The traditional Laz men's costume consists of a peculiar bandanalike kerchief covering the entire head above the eyes, knotted on the side and hanging down to the shoulder and the upper back; a snug-fitting jacket of coarse brown homespun with loose sleeves; and baggy dark brown woolen trousers tucked into slim, knee-high leather boots.