Arnadi is a mainly Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos. It lies 15 kilometres northwest of Ammochostos, 10 metres above sea level, in the Spathariko area of the Mesaoria. It is one of the lowland villages of the eastern Mesaoria, and only in the west of its land does the ground rise a little above 40 metres.¹ In the 1960 census it had 408 inhabitants, of whom 308 were Greeks and 100 Turks.

Name

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites Simos Menardos, the village may have taken its name from an owner called Arnad. Menardos identified him, with reservation, with a Ser Ardito, lord of four villages of the area.² Ardito’s four villages are recorded in a Venetian list of the late 15th century, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie: they are “Chiados”, “Trimuthi”, “S. Pifani” and “S. Vrossi”, but Arnadi is not among them.³

On Kitchener’s map of Cyprus, in the first years of British rule, the name is written “Arnadhi”. The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) records the village as “Αρναδί, το”.⁴

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, 31 property-holding households, Christian and Muslim, are recorded in Arnadi. They had cotton fields, gardens and a few wheat fields, while most of their land was uncultivated. They had very few trees, some fig and mulberry trees, and also beehives, 40 sheep, pairs of oxen, horses or mules and a few cows.⁵

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village, at the eastern edge of the old settlement, is dedicated to Saints Andronikos and Athanasia and dates from the 17th or 18th century. It is an Ancient Monument, and the village cemetery lay around it.⁶

Outside the village there are two chapels: the Panagia, of the 18th century, about 700 metres north of the settlement, and Agios Loukas, one and a half kilometres to the northwest.⁷

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals, some citrus fruit and vegetables, and more than 100 skales (a local land measure) were irrigated. Stock-raising was also well developed: in 1973 the village had 706 sheep, 224 goats and 43 oxen, and eight cattle farmers kept 23 cows.⁸ The Arnadi Co-operative Credit Society was founded in 1945 and the Arnadi Co-operative Grocery in 1957.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 193 inhabitants in 1881, 126 in 1891, 160 in 1901, 191 in 1911 and 207 in 1921, of whom 141 were Christians and 66 Muslims.⁹ In 1931 Arnadi had 250 inhabitants, 190 Christians and 60 Muslims, and in 1946 357, of whom 270 were Orthodox and 87 Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 408 inhabitants, 308 Greeks and 100 Turks, and in 1973 355 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of the village had 46 pupils and two teachers.

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite for union with Greece, 138 inhabitants of Arnadi signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 79 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Arnadi was occupied by the Turkish army and its Greek population was subjected to ethnic cleansing. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

Two people killed in 1974 are recorded on the land of Arnadi, both civilians. Three inhabitants of the village, all civilians, were recorded as missing; none of them was lost in the village itself, but two in the Gaidouras area and one in the Tziaos area. The remains of two were located and identified, while the third is still missing. Two more inhabitants of Arnadi, soldiers, were killed, one in the Ammochostos area and the other in the Angastina area.