After Russia annexed Batumi in 1878, tens of thousands of Muslim Laz left as muhacir and resettled around Duzce, the Marmara region and Istanbul.

In December 1925 Rize rose against the Hat Law; the cruiser Hamidiye shelled the area and eight local men, including imam Saban Koliva, were hanged.

Christian for more than a thousand years, the Laz gradually converted to Sunni Islam under Ottoman rule, a slow transformation that shaped their identity today.

From the 4th century the Kingdom of Lazica became one of the earliest Christian lands in the world, tying the Laz to the Byzantine Orthodox world.

From the 16th century until 1923 the eastern Black Sea formed the Sanjak of Lazistan, the Ottoman province named after the Laz, until the name was ...

For twenty years (541-562) the Byzantine and Sasanian empires fought over the Kingdom of Lazica, the Laz homeland on the eastern Black Sea, in a war ...

Between 1814 and 1834 the Laz of the eastern Black Sea, led by the Tuzcuoglu family, rose against Ottoman centralisation and even captured Trabzon, in one ...

The Kingdom of Lazica: Between Empires Along the misty shores of the eastern Black Sea, between the towering peaks of the Caucasus and the waters of ...

The Rize Attack of 1547: Ottoman Conquest and the Fall of Lazistan The history of the Laz people is marked by centuries of resistance, adaptation, and ...