Elia is a small Greek community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 9 kilometres west of Keryneia, 40 metres above sea level, on the northern slopes of the Pentadaktylos, between Karavas, Motides and Ftericha. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, it was the second smallest village of the district in area, after Karakoumi.¹ In the 1960 census it had 77 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

On the map of Cyprus drawn in the first years of British rule by the British officer Kitchener the name is written “Elaea”, and in the 1950 plebiscite for union with Greece “Εληά”. The official gazetteer of Cyprus writes it “Ελιά, η”, and under the same name it also records the stream that runs through the village’s land.²

Founding and first records

It is not known when Elia was founded. In the medieval chronicles and the Venetian lists of villages no reference was found that certainly concerns the village in Keryneia, because other villages in Cyprus had the same name. Its first certain written record is in the survey of 1832/33, where Elia is recorded together with neighbouring Ftericha in a single entry, as one village, “Elia and Ftericha”.³

Archaeological sites

In the autumn of 1959 the Department of Antiquities systematically surveyed the hills between the Pentadaktylos and the Keryneia–Myrtou road, in the area of Karavas, Motides, Palaiosofos, Elia and Ftericha. This surface survey was directed by the British archaeologist Hector Catling and the Cypriot archaeologist Kyriakos Nicolaou. In the area 182 sites were mapped, most of them unknown until then: many pre-Greek, many of the Ptolemaic Greek (“Hellenistic”) period and above all sites of the early medieval Greek period, with olive mills and presses. The finds show that the slopes around the village were inhabited and farmed from very early times.⁴

Turkish rule

The property survey of 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, describes the village of “Elia and Ftericha” as Christian and records seven property-holding households. They had wheat fields, small vineyards and gardens with mulberries, threshing floors and water. Their trees numbered 780, mainly olives, 577, and carobs, 198. They had two olive mills, a few oxen and cows, and ten beehives.⁵

The same survey also records separately a chiftlik, that is, a farm estate, of Elia, with a house, an olive mill, a wheat field and water. On the village’s land the Gazetteer records the place name “Kkifliki tis Elias”.⁶

British rule

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in 1884 Elia, together with Motides, Palaiosofos and Ftericha, applied with Karavas to become a rural municipality, and from then on it was included within the municipal boundaries of Karavas. In 1933 the four small villages were detached from Karavas and became separate communities.⁷

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village is dedicated to Saint Nicholas. The 2009 list of churches in the occupied areas of the Church of Cyprus dates it to the 15th century and notes that it was rebuilt in the early 20th century. It stands at the northern edge of the old village, on the road from Karavas, and beside it, on the north side, was the cemetery.⁸ According to an inhabitant of Ftericha who wrote about the villages around Karavas on the website of the Municipality of Karavas, until the invasion the same priest served in turn at Agios Nikolaos in Elia, at Agioi Petros kai Pavlos in Ftericha and at Agia Paraskevi in Palaiosofos, and the great feasts were likewise celebrated in turn in the three villages.⁹

Outside the village stands the chapel of the Archangel Michael, of the 15th or 16th century, which the 2009 list records as ruined. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, it lies about one and a half kilometres from the village and remains of wall paintings survive in it.¹⁰

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly citrus fruit and cereals, and to a lesser extent olives and carobs. There was almost no stock-raising: in 1973 only five goats and 145 poultry were kept in the village.¹¹

Education

Elia had no school of its own. According to the same inhabitant of Ftericha, the five or six children of the village walked to the Greek elementary school of Ftericha, one and a half kilometres away, with their food in a small basket. When the Ftericha school closed a few years before the invasion, the pupils went by taxi to the school in Karavas.¹²

Population

Elia was always a small village, but its population grew steadily in the 20th century. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 59 inhabitants in 1881, 35 in 1891, 31 in 1901, 49 in 1911 and 72 in 1921.¹³ In 1931 it had 46 inhabitants, all Christians, and in 1946 61, all Orthodox (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 77 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 96 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite for union with Greece, 37 inhabitants signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Elia 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 inhabitants’ return. The refugees of Elia can become members of the Refugee Association “O Karavas”, which unites the inhabitants of Karavas and the neighbouring villages.¹⁴

On 21 July 1974, near Elia, Turkish soldiers killed twelve civilian men. A group of civilians, among them inhabitants of Elia and Karavas, was trying to reach the mountain to escape the bombing when they were captured by Turkish soldiers. All the men were civilians, in civilian clothes. On the order of an officer the soldiers separated the men from the women and shot them in front of them. Some of the men were holding children in their arms, and three children were wounded; only one man survived. One woman of Elia lost her husband, her father, two brothers-in-law and an uncle that day. The European Commission of Human Rights heard three eyewitnesses, found their testimony credible and held in its 1976 report that it was established that the twelve civilians were killed by Turkish soldiers led by an officer, and that the act was imputable to Turkey.¹⁵

Four inhabitants of Elia, all civilians, were recorded as missing; three were lost in the Elia area and the fourth in the area of Exi Mili, Karavas. The remains of three have been located and identified, while one is still missing. Two more inhabitants of Elia, both civilians, were killed elsewhere, in the Pikro Nero area of Karavas and in Keryneia. On the land of Elia three people killed in 1974 are recorded, all soldiers, among them one from Greece.

The church of Agios Nikolaos was desecrated and looted. In 2018 only a small part of the iconostasis survived, and of the cemetery beside it only a few foundations of the grave crosses remained.¹⁶