Fyllia is a Greek community in the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 9 kilometres east of Morfou, 130 metres above sea level, in the basin of Morfou, and the river Ovgos flows north of the settlement.¹ Important pre-Greek settlements and tombs were excavated on its land, and from its finds a whole phase of the prehistory of Cyprus is named the “Philia phase”. In the 1960 census it had 731 inhabitants, all Greeks.

Name

The village was formerly written «Φιλιά» (Filia), and the present spelling was established with the standardisation of geographical names.² It is also recorded as «Φιλιά» in the 1950 plebiscite and in the registers of its cooperative societies. In the mapping of Cyprus by the British officer Herbert Kitchener, in the first years of British rule, it is written “Phylia”.³

The origin of the name is not certain. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the scholar Kyriakos Chatziioannou considers it an ancient Greek plant name, from «φυλία» (phylia), a kind of wild olive, and for this reason proposes the spelling «Φυλιά».⁴ The tree is already mentioned in Homer: in the Odyssey the shipwrecked Odysseus finds shelter under two bushes growing from the same root, «ὁ μὲν φυλίης, ὁ δ᾽ ἐλαίης», that is, one was a phylia and the other an olive.⁵

Founding and first records

Fyllia is not mentioned in the medieval sources. It does not appear in the fief lists of the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron, nor in the Venetian memorandum of the end of the 15th century published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, a village “Filia” is marked on old maps, but east of Kythrea, and it was most probably another settlement with the same name.⁶ The oldest written record found for the village itself is the Ottoman property survey of 1832/33.

On the community’s land, on the road to Kyra, there was also the small settlement of Vasiliko, which belonged administratively to Fyllia.⁷

Archaeological sites

The land of Fyllia, on the banks of the Ovgos, is one of the most important pre-Greek areas of Cyprus. At Laxia tou Kasinou the Cypriot archaeologist Porfyrios Dikaios excavated four chamber tombs for the Department of Antiquities in 1942–43. In 1947 he excavated a burial at the neighbouring site of Kafkalla and in 1951 a fifth tomb. Dikaios named the cemetery Philia-Vasiliko; later researchers identify it with Laxia tou Kasinou and distinguish it from a settlement about 500 metres to the north-west. The tombs had been reused, and the bones of the earlier dead had been pushed to the back of the chambers. With the dead were found vessels, spindle whorls, metal pins, knives, spiral earrings, an axe and pendants of shell and picrolite. The Red Polished, White Painted and Black Slip Combed pottery of the tombs characterises a whole phase of pre-Greek Cyprus, which took its name from the village.⁸

Further north, at Drakos, near the Ovgos, a team from the University of Edinburgh led by the British archaeologist Trevor Watkins excavated a pre-Greek settlement from 1966 to 1970. Rectangular houses with plaster floors and basins were found, a wall with a ditch on its west side, underground rock-cut spaces whose use remained unknown, and near the settlement a chamber tomb with two burials. A thin layer of sherds on the bedrock was then thought to be perhaps the oldest pottery found in Cyprus up to that time. Carbonised cereal grains were also found, the first from the early prehistory of Cyprus, and many deer antlers, deliberately buried.⁹

The area was also inhabited in the ancient Greek period. In 1953, after illicit digging, the Department of Antiquities excavated near Fyllia, at Aeras, two small tombs with pottery of the Geometric ancient Greek period.¹⁰

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Fyllia has 16 property-holding households. Among the owners there is also a priest. Fields are recorded, cotton fields, a field of madder, the plant that gave a red dye, threshing floors and shares of running water, as well as 55 olive trees, 31 mulberries and 13 fig trees. The owners had oxen and cows and 65 sheep and goats.¹¹

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of Fyllia, in the centre of the old village, is dedicated to Saint George.¹² A little further north, on the square, stands the 18th-century church of Profitis Ilias (the Prophet Elijah), which is an Ancient Monument. On his feast, on 20 July, a great fair was held on the village square.¹³ The cemetery lies on the eastern road into the village, about 500 metres east of Agios Georgios.¹⁴

Economy and society

Fyllia receives little rain, but it lies over the largest underground aquifer of Cyprus, that of the western Mesaoria. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 boreholes irrigated considerable areas, where mainly citrus, vegetables and cereals were grown, and in 1973 the inhabitants kept 1,362 sheep, 1,429 goats, 71 cows and 10,735 poultry.¹⁵

The village was also known for its “running waters”, springs whose shareholders collected the water in reservoirs and led it through earthen channels to the fields. There was also a carrot sorting centre, where inhabitants of the village and workers from other areas were employed. After independence Fyllia got running water in the houses (1960) and electricity (1961).¹⁶ The Cooperative Credit Society of Filia was founded in 1939 and the Cooperative Grocery of Filia in 1959.

Education

According to the community’s website, which draws on material from the State Archives, the elementary school of Fyllia began to operate in 1907, with one teacher, Ioannis Christofidis, and 38 pupils, all boys. It was housed in a building in the centre of the village, near Agios Georgios, until in 1936 it moved to a new building on the west side, towards Masari. From 1911 to 1952 children from Masari also attended it. Next to it another school was built from 1968, which operated in the school year 1970–71.¹⁷ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school had 186 pupils and six teachers.

Population

The population of Fyllia grew steadily. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 153 inhabitants in 1881, 185 in 1891, 220 in 1901, 314 in 1911 and 355 in 1921.¹⁸ In 1931 it had 365 inhabitants, 364 Christians and one Muslim, and in 1946 505, all of them Orthodox (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 731 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 1,042 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 270 inhabitants of Fyllia signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 72 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Fyllia 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 its inhabitants.

Four inhabitants of Fyllia were recorded as missing, two soldiers and two civilians. Two vanished in the village itself, one at Lapithos and one in the area of “Kefalovrysos” between Kapouti and Morfou. The remains of two of them have been located and identified; the other two are still missing. Two more inhabitants, one civilian and one soldier, were killed elsewhere, in the area of Elia (Morfou) and at Kythrea. On the land of Fyllia one dead of 1974 is recorded, a soldier, who was killed in the area of the village.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Agios Georgios into a mosque; the crosses were removed and the bells were replaced with loudspeakers.¹⁹ Profitis Ilias was looted and burnt, and part of it collapsed;²⁰ the 2009 list records it as ruined and in danger of collapse. It was restored in 2015.²¹