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Ancient History
We have little information as to the prehistory of this region, which
being covered in thick forest is difficult to excavate and reveals
little.
The earliest records we have are of the Kulku or Kulha, an Asian community speaking a glutinous language, the name being carved into a monument left by the Urartu king Sardur II, who conquered the area for his kingdom (765-735 BC).
Then in 714BC a tribe of Cimmerians came to settle by the Çoruh River, fleeing as their homeland in the Caucasus was overrun by the Saka branch of the Scythians. The Cimmerians spread throughout Anatolia and still today there are many places named Kemer as a record of their presence, including some villages in Rize. The Saka meanwhile spread westwards into eastern Europe and in 680BC defeated the last of the Cimmerians in Georgia (country), but they themselves were overturned by the Medes, who murdered the Saka King Madova in 626BC. Following the departure of the Saka the area was occupied by various tribes of Turks and Georgians.
Antiquity
According to Pliny, from 670BC onwards the Aegean Ancient Greek community of Miletus established a series of trading posts along the Black Sea coast, one of these was Rize. Although this colony was always vulnerable to attacks from the Medes until the Persian armies were defeated by Alexander the Great. Following the death of Alexander a number of separate were kingdoms were established in Anatolia including Bithynia and Cappadoccia and in this corner of the eastern Black Sea, Pontus. Rize was brought into the Kingdom of Pontus by Pharnaces in 180BC.
The kingdom was absorbed into the Roman Empire between 10AD and 395AD, when it passed to the Byzantines. By this time writers including Pliny the Elder and the Roman adventurer Arrian were describing the inhabitants as Laz.
The high country above Rize however was always in flux and as late as 626 AD a tribe of Scythians, having been moved from their settlements further east by the Persians, came to settle in the area that is today's district of Hemşin.
Large number of Turkish peoples began to arrive in the 11th century, following the defeat of the Byzantines at the Battle of Malazgirt, and the Çoruh River was incorporated into one of the Anatolian Turkish Beyliks following the defeat of the Georgian Kingdom at the siege of Posof in 1080.
Large numbers of Turks coming to settle along the coast, including a large influx of Kipchak Turks. However, the area was recaptured by the Byzantines in 1098 during the Crusades and later following the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade of 1204, the Byzantine Imperial family itself removed to nearby Trabzon establishing the Empire of Trebizond, of which Rize was part.
However, the area had been largely settled by Turks and this community remained, the Byzantines merely keeping a base in Rize.
The Turkish Era
The Turks in the area were from various tribes in Anatolia, all under the Seljuk umbrella but with varying degrees of loyalty and contentment; there were numerous rebellions and uprisings. This era ended when the Empire of Trebizond began paying tribute to the Ottoman Empire in 1456 and then the Ottoman army led by Sultan Mehmet II entered Trabzon in 1461. Rize fell in 1470, the last gasp of the Roman Empire. From 1924 onwards Rize has been a province of the Republic of Turkey. Slowly the Greek names of the villages and districts are being replaced with Turkish (Pilihoz is now Dumankaya, Mapavri is Çayeli etc.). However the old names are still in common usage, especially among the older generations, and can be seen on shop signs, taxi ranks and elesewhere, while other names from the Pontus era (such as Askoroz, Peripol and of course Rize itself) are still in use.
Until tea was planted here in the 1940's this was a poor area at the far end of the country, with only the Soviet Union beyond the Iron Curtain. Many generations of Rize people left to look for jobs in Istanbul or overseas.
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