Askeia (locally Assia) is a large Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos. It lies 30 kilometres west of Ammochostos, 70 metres above sea level, in the geographical region of the Mesaoria, on the old Lefkosia–Ammochostos road.¹ The village had two parishes, Agios Georgios and Timios Prodromos.² In the 1960 census it had 2,209 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

The official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) writes the name “Άσκεια” (Askeia); the inhabitants pronounced it “Άσσια” (Assia). In the French documents of King James II of 1468 the village is written “Asquie” and “Asquia”, in a Venetian list of the late 15th century “Aschia”, and in the chronicle of the 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas “Άσκια” (Askia).³

According to the Cypriot linguist Simos Menardos, as quoted by the Cultural Association “I Assia”, the medieval spellings show that the sounds “ski” and “ssi” were already pronounced alike at that time, that is, Askia and Assia are the same name. The inhabitants also said that the village took its name from the askia, the leather containers they made from the skins of sheep and goats.⁴

Founding and first records

The oldest written reference to the village is in the Life of Saint Spyridon, bishop of neighbouring Trimythous, present-day Tremetousia, who took part in the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.⁵ According to the Life, as quoted by the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the saint was born in Askeia:

οὗτος οὖν ὁ ἅγιος Σπυρίδων ἄγροικος μὲν ἦν, ὡς εἰπεῖν, κατὰ τὴν ἀνατροφήν, ἐν χωρίῳ Ἀσκίᾳ καλουμένῳ γεννηθεὶς εἰς τὴν Κυπρίων ἐπαρχίαν

“This Saint Spyridon, then, was, so to speak, a countryman in his upbringing, born in a village called Askia, in the province of Cyprus.”⁶

The older inhabitants said that the village once lay further north, at the site of Maneia, towards Angastina, and that it gradually moved south to higher ground to escape the floods of the river Gialias; the move was still going on in 1974. The Gazetteer records Maneia as a settlement, and south of the village the place name “Katalymata”, where, according to the Cultural Association, broken pottery, wells and caves were found, most probably the traces of an old settlement.⁷

Frankish and Venetian rule

Under Frankish rule the lords of Askeia were, according to the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, the Mimars, a noble family of which Machairas mentions an admiral and a marshal of the kingdom.⁸

Askeia was a stopping place on the road between Ammochostos and Lefkosia. Machairas writes that in the war with the Genoese, at the end of 1373, the army escorting Queen Eleanor from Ammochostos stopped there to eat, and that a little later the Genoese convoy carrying to Ammochostos, with camels and carts, the spoils of the sack of Lefkosia spent the night in the village.⁹

In 1468 Askeia belonged to the royal domain. In April of that year King James II gave two of his men, Hristoforo Benevides and Rodriguo de Mendoza, as a fief a yearly share of barley from the village, to be collected at threshing time. In the same days he exchanged a serf woman of Askeia, Evdokia, daughter of Artemos, for a serf woman from Gainagra, a fief of the nobleman Richo de Marino.¹⁰

Shortly after Cyprus passed to the Venetians, Askeia was the seat of a bailiwick, that is, an administrative district of the royal villages. In a Venetian statistical memorandum of the late 15th century, published by Mas Latrie, the “bailiwick of Aschia” has four villages: Askeia, Vatyli, “Stephani” and “Asomatos”.¹¹

In the summer of 1570, shortly before the Turkish invasion, the highest officials of the Venetian administration went to Askeia to meet the military commander of Ammochostos and arrange supplies of wheat, animals and whatever else was needed. This is recorded by the Cypriot Dominican monk Angelo Calepio, who lived through the siege of Lefkosia.¹²

Turkish rule

The 18th-century Cypriot historian Archimandrite Kyprianos names Askeia first among the villages from which the janissaries of the island were paid: their land gave the tithe of every product, and each inhabitant paid one piastre a year, the tax called “spentza”.¹³

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Askeia is recorded as a mixed village, with 120 property-holding households. Almost all the cultivated land was cotton fields, with a few grain fields, and large areas lay fallow. There were hardly any trees: only one olive tree is recorded. The households had over 1,900 sheep, over 70 pairs of oxen, cows and 62 beehives. Two chiftliks, that is, large farming estates, are also recorded on the village’s land.¹⁴

Churches and monasteries

The village’s two parish churches, Agios Georgios and Agios Ioannis Prodromos, date from the 18th century. The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, describes them as two large churches.¹⁵

North of the village, inside the cemetery, stands the two-aisled chapel of Panagia Theotokos, of the 15th–16th century, which is an Ancient Monument. Jeffery notes a shield with a coat of arms above the gate of the enclosure and, in the portico on the south side, the incised tombstone of a layman with a Greek inscription around it.¹⁶ The British geologists C. V. Bellamy and A. J. Jukes-Browne wrote in 1905 that the church stood in a pit, eight to ten feet below the surrounding ground, and gave it as an example of how the deposits of the torrents and the irrigation channels gradually raised the ground of the Mesaoria.¹⁷

The church of Agios Spyridon was built, according to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in the courtyard of the house of the folk painter Michail Kasialos, at his own expense, and he painted its icons himself.¹⁸

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the land of Askeia was mainly unirrigated, and before 1974 the inhabitants grew above all barley and wheat, as well as fodder crops, melons and watermelons, a few vegetables, fruit trees and vines; in earlier times they also grew cotton and sesame. At harvest time reapers came to the village from other parts of Cyprus. In 1973 the inhabitants kept almost 2,800 sheep, 1,450 goats and 437 cows and calves, the largest number in the district of Ammochostos. Clothing and brick workshops operated in the village, and its women were known for their embroidery, the “assiotika”.¹⁹ In 1926 the Cooperative Credit Society of Assia was founded.

Education

According to the Cultural Association “I Assia”, during Turkish rule the children learned their letters from the priest, and around 1868 the inhabitants paid for and brought the village’s first teacher, Michail Chachchas from Larnaka.²⁰ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Askeia had 372 pupils and 13 teachers.

Population

The population of Askeia grew steadily. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Askeia had 989 inhabitants in 1881, 1,009 in 1891, 1,173 in 1901, 1,382 in 1911 and 1,676 in 1921.²¹ In 1931 the village had 1,755 inhabitants, 1,639 Christians and 116 Muslims, and in 1946 2,041, of whom 1,904 were Orthodox, 136 Muslims and one other (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 2,209 inhabitants, all of them Greeks, and in 1973 2,734 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 622 inhabitants of Askeia signed in the parish of Agios Georgios. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 267 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

According to the biographies of the EOKA Liberation Struggle Foundation, Fotis Pittas from Frenaros and Ilias Papakyriakou from Lythragkomi organised EOKA in Askeia and the surrounding villages.²²

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Askeia was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek population was subjected to ethnic cleansing. Panagiotis Kallis, a former judge of the Supreme Court, who was arrested in the village at the time, writes that the men arrested were held at first in Askeia and on 17 and 21 August were taken by bus to the Pavlides Garage, in the Turkish sector of Lefkosia; many were taken from there to prisons in Turkey.²³ The 1976 report of the European Commission of Human Rights records testimony that about 300 inhabitants of Askeia were taken to Dekeleia; according to one testimony, they were loaded onto buses, taken to Pergamos, at the edge of the British base, and told to walk across to the other side.²⁴ Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

84 inhabitants of Askeia, 70 civilians and 14 soldiers, were recorded as missing in 1974. 51 went missing at the Pavlides Garage, where the Commission found that prisoners were being held,²⁵ 18 inside the village and the remaining 15 in other places: at Afaneia, in the area of Kontea, at Mora, at Trachonas, at Voni, at Angastina, at Dikomo and on the Tymvou–Aglantzia road. The remains of 67 have been located and identified; the other 17 are still missing.

In Askeia and its area 11 dead of 1974 are recorded, 9 civilians and 2 soldiers. In addition, 6 inhabitants of the village, 5 soldiers and one civilian, were killed elsewhere: in Larnaka, in the area of Kazivera, at Kontemenos and in the area of Agios Pavlos in Lefkosia, while one was wounded in the area of Tziaos and died in a makeshift hospital in Ammochostos.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Agios Ioannis Prodromos into a mosque and built a minaret on its west side. The church of Agios Georgios was desecrated, looted and is used as a store for farm tools; by 2022 its portico had collapsed. The chapel of the Panagia and the church of Agios Spyridon were also desecrated and looted. In the new cemetery the crosses of the graves lie scattered among the weeds.²⁶