Argaki is a large, mainly Greek community in the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 4 kilometres southeast of Morfou, 100 metres above sea level, in the plain of Morfou, near the river Serrachis. In the 1960 census it had 1,291 inhabitants, of whom 1,219 were Greeks and 72 Turks.

Name

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Argaki is the form used on official maps; the inhabitants called the village “Αρκάτζ’ιν” (Arkatzin).¹

Founding and first records

The first written record of the village is most probably the “Casal Argaglia” of a Venetian statistical memorandum of the late 15th century, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie; he himself notes that the name may be Argaki.² The British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, writes that Argaki is marked on old maps as “Ariati”.³

Venetian rule

If Mas Latrie’s “Casal Argaglia” is Argaki, shortly after Cyprus passed to the Venetians the village was a royal village, that is, it belonged directly to the state and not to a feudal lord. In the memorandum published by Mas Latrie it is listed among the twelve royal villages of the bailiwick of Morfou, the administrative district to which it belonged, together with Morfou, Peristerona, Pano and Kato Zodeia and Akaki.⁴

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Argaki is a village with a mixed population, with 43 property-holding households. Most of their property consisted of fields; they had a few trees, mainly olives, more than 300 sheep and goats and 53 oxen.⁵

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village, at its centre, is dedicated to the Timios Prodromos (Saint John the Baptist). The old church was renovated in the 19th century; it is an Ancient Monument, in Schedule B of the Schedule of Ancient Monuments. At the southern edge of the old village centre stands the chapel of Agioi Andronikos and Athanasia.⁶ The village also had the churches of Agia Varvara, which Jeffery mentions in 1918 as renovated, and of Agios Kosmas.⁷ The Greek Orthodox cemetery lies in the fields, about 700 metres north of the church.⁸

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly citrus fruit, vegetables and melons. The rich groundwater of the Morfou area made it possible to irrigate most of the village’s land, and in 1962 the Morfou dam was built on the Serrachis, a little north of the village.⁹ The Argaki Co-operative Credit Society “Anorthosis” was founded in 1923 and the village’s Co-operative Grocery in 1954.

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites the Cypriot historian of education Loizos Philippou, the first school of the village was founded in 1873, with the deacon Chariton, a native of Argaki, as teacher; he died the following year. From 1874 to 1877 Ioannis Kyriakidis from Morfou taught, and then the inhabitants built the school at their own expense and with their own labour. From 1877 to 1923 the teacher was Neofytos Papadopoulos from the village, who had studied at the school of the monastery of Agios Panteleimon at Myrtou and at the Scholarcheion of Mylasa in Caria in Asia Minor.¹⁰ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Argaki had 199 pupils and seven teachers.

Population

Argaki grew steadily in the 20th century. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 541 inhabitants in 1881, 445 in 1891, 452 in 1901, 520 in 1911 and 647 in 1921.¹¹ In 1931 it had 656 inhabitants, 588 Christians and 68 Muslims, and in 1946 974, of whom 898 were Orthodox and 76 Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 1,291 inhabitants, 1,219 Greeks and 72 Turks, and in 1973 1,541 Greeks and around 60 Turks (estimate).

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite for union with Greece, 509 inhabitants of Argaki signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 43 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Argaki was occupied by the Turkish army and its Greek population was subjected to ethnic cleansing. Some inhabitants remained in the village; according to testimony to the European Commission of Human Rights, in early 1975 people from Argaki and other neighbouring villages were taken to the detention centre set up in a school in Morfou, where they were held in confinement.¹² Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

Four inhabitants of Argaki, all soldiers, were recorded as missing. They were lost in the Lapithos area, on the Keryneia–Panagra road, at Agios Georgios (Keryneia) and in the Karavas–Pente Mili area. The remains of one have been located and identified; the other three are still missing. Two more inhabitants were killed elsewhere, a civilian in the Kazivera area and a soldier at Kyra (Morfou). In the village itself three people killed are recorded, all civilian inhabitants of Argaki.

The 2009 list records the church of the Timios Prodromos as desecrated and damaged. The illegal Turkish authorities allowed an art association to use it, and its crosses have been removed.¹³ The chapel of Agioi Andronikos and Athanasia was used as a stable and is today in ruins, without a roof.