THE LAZ NAHIYE IN THE BATUMI SANJAK IN THE EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Abstract

In the Republic of Turkey, in the city of Ankara, numerous documents of great importance for the history of Georgia are preserved in the archive of the General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre. Among them are the "Exstensive Register (Defter) of Liva of Batumi“ and the "Short Register (Defter) of Liva of Batumi“ from the early 18th century. Analysis of this documents reveals multiple previously unknown and noteworthy facts. At that time, the Batumi Liva encompassed the territory of present-day Batumi and fourteen surrounding villages; the settlements stretching from the Black Sea estuary up the Chorokhi Valley as far as Borçkha, as well as the villages along the Black Sea coastal strip of historical Chaneti/Lazeti up to the area of Atina (modern Pazar in Rize Province). Administratively, beyond the outskirts of the city, it included the nahiyes (districts) of Arhave, Atina, and Hemshin.

The research paper provides an extensive analysis of the information relating to the Arhavi Nahiye. It presents the contemporary toponymy, which is entirely Laz—that is, Kartvelian. It reconstructs the demographic and religious landscape: in more than 70 populated places there were up to 3,000 households, with an estimated population of about 18,000 inhabitants. More than half of the population was Christian. Ethnically, they were Laz. They paid various types of taxes, including those characteristic of Christian subjects—ispence (a poll tax levied specifically on non-Muslims), as well as taxes on pigs, wine, and beehives.

Christian Laz in the Ottoman Empire were subordinated to the Greek (Orthodox) Church; therefore, the conditions of land tenure here resemble those of the Balkans. A large number of baştina (a form of hereditary landholding) is recorded, a phenomenon not encountered in the Georgian provinces of the Empire.

Among the population, Laz hereditary names with suffixes such as -va, -ia, -shi, -ani, -skiri, and others are preserved, indicating that in the medieval Black Sea region there existed a unified Mingrelian-Laz ethnosocial and ethnolinguistic space. This space was characterized by similar patterns of hereditary name formation and survived at least until the eighteenth century.

Key words: Batumi, Defter, Lazeti, Arhave, Tax, hereditary names.