Antiquity The earliest known inhabitants of the Rize region were tribes of Asian origin who spoke agglutinative languages. The region first appears in written history in the 8th century BC, marking the beginning of its Historical Age. The Çoruh valleys and the Rize area are mentioned as “Kulki” or “Kulkha” in a cuneiform inscription commissioned by the
Urartian king
Sarduri II in 765 BC. This inscription was carved into a rock above Taşköprü Village, south of
Lake Çıldır and north of
Kars. Later Greek sources referred to the region’s people as the “Kolk” or “Kolditians.” This inscription remains the earliest known written reference to the region. Following his victory over the
Achaemenid king
Darius III,
Alexander the Great brought Anatolia under his control, a rule that lasted until his death in 323 BC. In the power struggles that followed,
Mithridates I Ktistes proclaimed independence and established the
Kingdom of Pontus, which gradually extended its influence along the Black Sea coast toward Sinop. In 180 BC, the Pontic king
Pharnaces captured Rize and added it to the kingdom’s domain. The region later passed into
Roman hands in AD 10, and after the Roman Empire was divided, Rize and its surrounding areas continued as part of the
Byzantine Empire.
Medieval era During the medieval era, the region was under Byzantine control, and was mainly populated by Greeks and indigenous
Lazs. During the reign of the
Byzantine emperor Justinian I ( 527–565), the tribes of the interior, called
Sannoi or
Tzannoi, the ancestors of modern Laz people, were subdued,
Christianized and brought to central rule. Locals began to have closer contact with the Greeks and acquired various
Hellenic cultural traits, including in some cases the language. Locals were under nominal Byzantine
suzerainty in the
theme of
Chaldia, with its capital at
Trebizond, governed by native semi-autonomous rulers, like the
Gabras family. In 790 AD, Armenians fleeing from the
Arab invasion of Armenia settled in Hemshin and established the
Principality of Hamamshen. Following the invasion of the
Seljuk Turks, there was a larger influx of
Armenians in the area, resulting in partial Armenization of the local Tzan population. With the Georgian intervention in Chaldia and
collapse of Byzantine Empire in 1204, the
Empire of Trebizond was established along the southeastern coast of the Black Sea, populated by a large Lazian-speaking population. 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 merely 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. In 1282, the kingdom of Imereti
besieged Trebizond, however after the failed attempt to take the city, the Georgians occupied several provinces, and 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.
The Ottoman era The Laz populated area was often contested by different Georgian principalities. Through the
Battle of Murjakheti (1535), the
Principality of Guria finally ensured control over the area until 1547, when it was conquered by resurgent
Ottoman forces and reorganized into the
Lazistan Sanjak as part of
eyalet of
Trabzon. From the late-17th century onwards, the Ottoman administration built multiple
bridges across the Fırtına River and its tributaries. The province was a site of battles between Ottoman and
Russian armies during the
Caucasus Campaign of
World War I, and was occupied by Russian forces in 1916–1918. It was returned to the Ottomans with the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918. Since 1924, Rize has been a province of the Republic of Turkey. Until tea plantations were established in the 1940s, the province was a poor area at the far end of the country, with only the
Soviet Union beyond the
Iron Curtain. Many generations of people in Rize left to look for jobs in
Istanbul or overseas.
In Turkey In September 1935, the third
Inspectorate General (
Umumi Müfettişlik, UM) was created, to which the Rize province was included. Its establishment was based on the Law 1164 from June 1927, The third UM spanned across the provinces of
Erzurum,
Artvin, Rize,
Trabzon,
Kars,
Gümüşhane,
Erzincan and
Ağrı. It was governed by an Inspector General seated in the city of
Erzurum. The Inspectorate General was dissolved in 1952 during the government of the
Democrat Party.
Life in Rize today The city of
Rize is a coastal town on a narrow strip of flat land between the mountains and the sea. Today, the area is wealthier, although there is a marked difference between the lifestyle of the people in the relatively wealthy city of Rize and those in the remote villages where wooden houses perch on the steep mountainside with the rain beating down. The province is known in Turkey for the production of
Rize tea. ==Geography==