Diorios is a mainly Greek community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 25 kilometres west of Keryneia, 310 metres above sea level, near Myrtou, and is surrounded by forests: the Diorios forest stretches west and south-west of the village and the Mandres forest to the north-west. Its land was among the most extensive in the district, second only to that of Kormakitis.¹ In the 1960 census it had 670 inhabitants, of whom 514 were Greeks and 156 Turks.

Name

The origin of the name is not known with certainty. In the Italian sources of the 15th century the village is written “Diorigo”.² According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the inhabitants also pronounced it “Dkiorios”.³

Founding and first records

Diorios first appears in a written source in the 1460s, as “Diorigo”, in the list of the fiefs distributed by King James II. It is preserved by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron.⁴

On the village’s land, towards the north-west, the official gazetteer of Cyprus records the site of Machaneia as a settlement. It is most probably an abandoned settlement of the area.⁵

Archaeological sites

At the site of Mersineri, between Diorios and Agia Eirini, the British archaeologist Hector Catling carried out in July 1958, for the Department of Antiquities, a three-week rescue excavation before the land was cleared. In three parts of the site he found buildings, remains of kilns and occupation layers. The settlement was first inhabited at the end of the 1st century BC, was then abandoned, and after at least four centuries was inhabited again by the people of a large pottery workshop, with traces of at least twelve kilns. In one room a stored stock of cooking ware, pots and lids was found, which Catling took to be the last products of the workshop. According to him, the workshop operated from about AD 650 to 750.⁶

At the site of Aloupotrypes Catling had already collected in 1952, in a surface survey, sherds of painted pottery of the pre-Greek period, which are now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. These vessels show contacts with other settlements of the time, such as Lapithos and Kythrea.⁷

Antiquity

The sherds from Aloupotrypes show that the land of Diorios was already inhabited in the pre-Greek period. At Mersineri occupation began at the end of the Ptolemaic Greek (“Hellenistic”) period and continued into the early Roman period.

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

The pottery workshop of Mersineri operated in the medieval Greek period of the Arab raids. Its finds show that there was then organised, large-scale production of everyday pottery on the land of Diorios.

Frankish and Venetian rule

In the 1460s King James II gave Diorios as a fief to Andriola, wife of Pietro Gulo.⁸ Shortly after Cyprus passed to the Venetians, the village belonged directly to the state: in a Venetian statistical memorandum of the late 15th century, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, “Casal Diorigo” is listed among the royal villages that did not belong to any bailiwick, that is, to any of the administrative districts of the royal domain.⁹

According to a local tradition recorded by the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in the years of Frankish rule there were two “rigata”, that is, royal manors, in the area of the village, where two noblewomen lived, sisters of the king, Lady Marou and the Archontissa.¹⁰ On the village’s land the Gazetteer records the place name “Chorafia tis Arkontissas” (“the Archontissa’s fields”).¹¹

The Encyclopaedia also records other traditions of the inhabitants. Near the village there survived a large ground-floor room, which tradition links with the buildings of a tower or castle from which they threw “koulledes”, that is, stone or iron balls. According to another tradition, when the Turks came many inhabitants hid in a cave, but they were discovered and slaughtered; the cave has since been called the cave of Matz’ellaris, from the slaughter. In another cave, closer to the village, the cave of Ai Giannis, inhabitants of the village had also taken refuge, according to tradition.¹²

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Diorios is recorded as a mixed village with 28 property-holding households. The inhabitants had wheat fields, cotton fields, threshing floors and a garden with mulberries, 72 olive trees and 53 mulberry trees. Livestock made up the largest part of their property: almost 350 sheep and goats, cows and oxen, eleven camels and 34 beehives.¹³

Churches and monasteries

The old Greek Orthodox church of the village, at its southern edge, is dedicated to Saint Marina and dates from the 18th or 19th century.¹⁴ As it was too small for the village, the inhabitants collected money for decades for a new church, dedicated to the Prophet Elijah, which the 2009 list of churches in the occupied areas of the Church of Cyprus dates to 1974. According to the Union of Communities of Keryneia District, 1974 was only the second year in which the inhabitants celebrated the feast of the Prophet Elijah, on 20 July, in the new church.¹⁵

The Greek Orthodox cemetery, south of the old church, replaced an older one, which was closed in 1891.¹⁶

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 a large part of the land was state forest, and on the rest the inhabitants grew mainly cereals, carobs and olives. Stock-raising, mainly of sheep and goats, was also well developed, as already in the survey of 1832/33: in 1973 the village had 944 sheep and 1,120 goats.¹⁷ The Diorios Cooperative Credit Society was founded in 1938.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 387 inhabitants in 1881, 432 in 1891, 504 in 1901, 614 in 1911 and 700 in 1921, of whom 445 were Christians and 255 Muslims.¹⁸ In 1931 Diorios had 688 inhabitants, 469 Christians and 219 Muslims, and in 1946 795, of whom 517 were Orthodox, 271 Muslims and 7 others (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 670 inhabitants, 514 Greeks and 156 Turks, and in 1973 501 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of the village had 58 pupils and 2 teachers.

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite for union with Greece, 344 inhabitants of Diorios signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 33 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Diorios was occupied by the Turkish army and its Greek population was subjected to ethnic cleansing. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in October 1975 16 Greeks were still living in the village, enclaved, and in September 1976 the last of them were expelled.¹⁹ Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants’ return.

In the village itself three people killed in 1974 are recorded, all civilians. A soldier from Diorios was killed elsewhere, at Trikomo.

The Turkish army used the new church of the Prophet Elijah as a military hospital, and in 2018 it stood inside a guarded military camp.²⁰ The old church of Agia Marina was desecrated, looted and seriously damaged, and the occupation authorities illegally converted it into an animal pen.