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The Laz are an ethnic group who live primarily on the Black Sea coastal regions of Turkey and Georgia. They speak a language, related to Mingrelian and more remotely to Georgian (South Caucasian languages).

They were once Christians under the Byzantine empire and Georgian kingdom, but now almost all of them are Sunni Muslims. They speak the Laz language. The Laz are primarily designated as fisherfolk by the Turkish public (in fact, they are mostly farmers of tea and maize). Under the Ottoman Empire, they lived in the Lazistan sanjak. Their folk traditions resembles to those of the Georgians, particularly a Mingrelian group, but with Turkish influences.

Geographical distribution

The ancient kingdom of Colchis and its successor Lazica (locally known as Egrisi) was located in the same region the Laz speakers are found in today, and its inhabitants probably spoke an ancestral version of the language. Colchis was the setting for the famous Greek legend of Jason and the Argonauts.

Today most Laz speakers live in Northeast Turkey, in a strip of land along the shore of the Black Sea: in the Pazar (Atina), Ardeşen (Artaşen) and Fındıklı (Viče) districts of Rize, and in the Arhavi (Arkabi), Hopa (Xopa) and Borçka districts of Artvin. There are also communities in northwestern Anatolia (Karamürsel, in Akçakoca, Sakarya, Kocaeli), where many immigrants settled since the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) and now also in Istanbul and Ankara. Only a few Laz live in Georgia, chiefly in Adjara (est. 30,000 speakers, about 2000 of them in Sarpi).

• Ethnic groups in Turkey
• Ethnic groups in Georgia
• Georgian society
• Sunni Muslims