For centuries the homeland of the Laz had its own place on the Ottoman map: the Sanjak of Lazistan, an administrative province that carried the name of its people.

From conquest to province

After the Ottomans absorbed the Empire of Trebizond and pushed east in the 16th century, they organised the eastern Black Sea coast into the Sanjak of Lazistan, part of the larger province of Trabzon. It stretched along the coast between Trabzon and Batum, covering roughly today’s Rize Province and the coast of Artvin, and was divided into the districts (kazas) of Of, Rize, Atina (Pazar) and Hopa.

A shifting capital

The sanjak was first governed from the coastal fortress of Gonia, then from Batum, the great port of the region. When Batum was lost to the Russian Empire after the war of 1877-78, Rize became the capital, the role it still holds as the regional centre of Lazistan today.

A name erased

The Sanjak of Lazistan survived until the fall of the empire in 1923. A few years later, in 1926, the new republic officially banned the very name “Lazistan,” and the territory was split between the provinces of Rize and Artvin. The administrative name disappeared, but the identity it described did not.

Learn more: Lazistan Sanjak on Wikipedia.

Map: the eastern Black Sea and Transcaucasia, by A. K. Johnston, 1861 (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.