What is known about Rize before written history is limited. Several legends explain the name, but none of them is established. At the start of the second millennium BC there were communities here living by farming and herding, and the province's written history begins in the 7th century BC with the voyages of Milesian sailors along this coast.
After that the raids came in sequence — Cimmerian, Median, Persian — and in 180 BC king Pharnakes took the district. The Parthians held it in the 1st century BC and Rome took over in AD 10.
Sitting on the trade road between the Black Sea and Iran made Rize worth fighting over, and it changed hands several times between Byzantium and the Sasanians. It passed to the Seljuks after Manzikert in 1071, returned to Byzantine rule after the First Crusade, and from 1204 came under the Empire of Trebizond. Ottoman rule began in 1461, under Mehmed II.
