Mingrelian

The Mingrelians are a Kartvelian people of the Colchian lowland in western Georgia, settled around the lower Rioni River and the Black Sea coast. Like the Laz, they descend from tribes of ancient Colchis and its successor Lazica, where Christianity became the state religion in the fifth century. In 780 Lazica passed to the Kingdom of Abkhazia, and the region joined the unified Georgian monarchy in the eleventh century.

The Dadiani family governed the region, then called Odishi, as hereditary dukes through the fourteenth century. After the breakup of Georgia in the fifteenth century, it became the autonomous Principality of Mingrelia under Levan I Dadiani in 1557.

The princes balanced between the Ottoman Empire, Abkhazia and Imereti, warring with neighbors and trading along the Black Sea, until accepting Russian suzerainty in 1803. The Mingrelians kept their own Kartvelian language alongside Georgian.