Gaidouras is a Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos. It lies 15 kilometres north-west of Ammochostos, 20 metres above sea level, in the geographical region of the Mesaoria, between Prastio Ammochostou and Stylloi. In the 1960 census it had 366 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

In the Venetian memorandum of the late 15th century the village is written “Gaduradas”, and in the survey of Cyprus by the British officer Herbert Kitchener, in the first years of British rule, “Gaidhoura”.¹

According to an old tradition, recorded by the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village took its name from the donkey (in Greek, gaidaros) of Saint Spyridon, the Cypriot bishop of Trimythous: when the saint passed through the place, the inhabitants stole his donkey, or, in another version, the donkey died on that spot. After the independence of Cyprus it was proposed that the village be renamed Nea Sparti. According to the same encyclopaedia, the new name was not officially adopted.² It was used, however: the official list of the dead of 1974 writes the village as “Gaidouras (Nea Sparti)”.

Founding and first records

Gaidouras first appears in a written source at the end of the 15th century, shortly after Cyprus passed to the Venetians. In a Venetian statistical memorandum, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, “Casal Gaduradas” is recorded among the royal villages, that is, those that belonged directly to the state and not to a feudal lord. It belonged to the bailiwick, the administrative district, of Sivori in the Mesaoria, which had six villages, among them a “Prastio”, most probably neighbouring Prastio. The village is not mentioned in the fief lists of the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron.³

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Gaidouras is a Christian village with 16 property-holding households and a church. More than half of their fields were cotton fields, and the rest mainly wheat fields; no trees are recorded. Their animals were 1,220 sheep and a few oxen and cows, and they accounted for more than a third of the value of the village’s property.⁴

Churches and monasteries

The village’s Greek Orthodox parish church is dedicated to Saint Mamas and dates from the 19th–20th century. In the early 20th century the British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus, describes Gaidouras as a small new village with an imposing, unfinished church, which had been under rebuilding since 1906.⁵ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the church was completed in 1927.⁶ The village cemetery was originally just behind the church, on its north side.⁷

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew almost nothing but cereals, and stock-raising was, as already in the survey of 1832/33, fairly well developed: 2,070 sheep and 335 goats were kept in the village, and their milk was made into yoghurt for sale. The main Lefkosia–Ammochostos road passed beside the village, and near it a metal furniture factory operated. A few years before the invasion, a few inhabitants worked in Ammochostos. From 1905 to 1951 the Cyprus railway ran north of the village.⁸ In 1945 the Gaidouras Cooperative Credit Society was founded.

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of Gaidouras had 37 pupils and two teachers.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 150 inhabitants in 1881, 198 in 1891, 148 in 1901, 293 in 1911 and 268 in 1921.⁹ In 1931 Gaidouras had 282 inhabitants, 281 Christians and one Muslim, and in 1946 331, all Orthodox (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 366 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 314 Greeks.

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 177 inhabitants of Gaidouras signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 30 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle. According to the biography by the EOKA Liberation Struggle Foundation, the EOKA fighter Christos Samaras from Liopetri was also active at Gaidouras.¹⁰

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Gaidouras was taken by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

One inhabitant of Gaidouras, a civilian, was recorded as missing. He vanished in the village itself, and his remains have not been located to this day. Three dead of 1974 are recorded on the land of Gaidouras, all civilians. Two more inhabitants of the village, both soldiers, were killed elsewhere, at Kouklia Ammochostou and at Pyrogi.

According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, the occupation authorities have illegally converted the church of Agios Mamas into a mosque. The crosses and all its furnishings were removed, and the south entrance was walled up. Since about 2014–15 the church has been abandoned.¹¹