page_title: Trabzon
section_title: People
hierarchical_section_title: Trabzon / People
context_page_description: Trabzon, historically known as Trebizond in English, is a city on the Black Sea coast of northeastern Turkey and the capital of Trabzon Province. Trabzon, located on the historical Silk Road, became a melting pot of religions, languages and culture for centuries and a trade gateway to Persia in the southeast and the Caucasus to the northeast. The Venetian and Genoese merchants paid visits to Trebizond during the medieval period and sold silk, linen and woolen fabric.
  Both republics had merchant colonies within the city – Leonkastron and the former 'Venetian castle' – that played a role to Trebizond similar to the one Galata played to Constantinople. Trabzon formed the basis of several states in its long history and was the capital city of the Empire of Trebizond between 1204 and 1461. During the early modern period, Trabzon, because of the importance of its port, again became a focal point of trade to Persia and the Caucasus.
context_section_description: The current ethnic background of the people of Trabzon is mostly Turkish. There are also descendants of Circassian muhajiris in the city, as well as smaller number of Laz people, Muslim Greeks (Romeyka-speakers) and Armenians (Hemshin). Local Turks are mostly of Chepni Turkmen origin. The main language of these ethnic groups is Turkish. Modern migration since the dissolution of the Soviet Union has brought a significant number of Russians, Ukrainians and people from the Caucasus (mostly Georgia) into the city. Russian language shops and facilities can be found in the town.
  Pontic Greek has been spoken in the region since early antiquity. The local dialect developed along its own lines and is today partly intelligible to speakers of Standard Greek. It was spoken mainly by a Greek Orthodox multi-ethnic population up to the population exchange; nearly all speakers of this local variant of Pontic Greek are now Muslims. A very similar dialect is spoken by a community of about 400 speakers, descendants of Christians from the Of valley now living in Greece in the village of Nea Trapezounta (New Trebizond), today part of Katerini, Central Macedonia.
  Laz people, who are aboriginal to this area, also live in Trabzon. Numerous villages inside and out of Trabzon of the Laz date back as early as the period of Queen Tamar's rule (Georgian: თამარი, also transliterated as T'amar or Thamar; c. 1160 – 18 January 1213) in the newly unified Kingdom of Georgia. During the Queen's rule, sizeable groups of immigrating Georgians moved to Trabzon where they continue to preserve their native tongue. There was an Armenian community in Trebizond as early as the 7th century.
  During the 13th and 14th centuries, numerous Armenian families migrated there from Ani. Robert W. Edwards published part of an early 15th-century diary from the Castilian ambassador who visited Trabzon and compared the churches of the Greek and Armenian communities.  It was stated by the ambassador that the Armenians, who were not well-liked by the Greeks, had a population large enough to support a resident bishop.  According to Ronald C. Jennings, in the early 16th century, Armenians made up approximately 13 percent of the city's population. At present, Trabzon does not have an Armenian-speaking community.
  The Chepni people, a tribe of Oghuz Turks who played an important role in the history of the eastern Black Sea area in the 13th and 14th centuries, live in the Şalpazarı (Ağasar valley) region of the Trabzon Province. Very little has been written on the Turkification of the area. There are no historical records of any considerable Turkish-speaking groups in the Trabzon area until the late 15th century, with the exception of the Chepnis. The original Greek (and in some regions Armenian) speakers imposed features from their mother language into the Turkish spoken in the region. Heath W. Lowry's work with Halil İnalcık on Ottoman tax books (Tahrir Defteri) provides detailed demographic statistics for the city of Trabzon and its surrounding areas during the Ottoman period.
  It is possible that the majority of the population of Trabzon and Rize (and other ancient Greek colonies in the Pontus region) — except up to the time of the Chepni Turk immigration waves — consisted of indigenous Caucasian tribes (the Colchians and the Laz) who had been partly Hellenized religiously and linguistically. Michael Meeker stresses the cultural resemblances (e.g. in village structure, house types, and pastoral techniques) between the Eastern Black Sea coast and the areas in the Caucasus proper.
caption: Bessarion was born in Trebizond on January 2, 1403. He was one of the illustrious Greek scholars who contributed to the Renaissance in Western Europe in the 15th century.
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