Genagra is a mixed community in the occupied district of Ammochostos. It lies 24 kilometres north-west of Ammochostos, 50 metres above sea level, in the plain of the Mesaoria, near Lefkonoiko. Greeks and Turks had long lived in the village in almost equal numbers. In the 1960 census it had 578 inhabitants, 301 of them Greeks and 277 Turks.

Name

The origin of the name is not known with certainty. The official gazetteer of Cyprus writes it “Γέναγρα, τά”, in the plural.¹ In the Italian and French sources of the 14th and 15th centuries the village is written Genagra, Guenagra, Ienagra and Tenagra; the last form is, according to the editor of the chronicle concerned, most probably a corruption of Ienagra.²

Founding and first records

The first written record of Genagra dates from the 14th century. The 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas mentions the village among the fiefs that King James I distributed in the 1380s, and so does the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron.³

Frankish and Venetian rule

James I gave Genagra to Renaud de Mimars, one of the knights who had supported him; Bustron refers to him as marshal of Cyprus.⁴

In 1460 King James II made Rizzo de Marino of Naples chamberlain of Cyprus and gave him Genagra. In the list of the fiefs that James distributed, Rizzo, captain of Ammochostos, holds “Tenagra” together with three more villages and land at Lefkonoiko.⁵

A royal document of April 1468, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, also preserves the name of a woman of the village. The king took from Rizzo’s fief at Genagra a serf, Liovia Kosti tou Kounoupi, and gave in exchange one of his own serfs from Askeia, Evdokia tou Artemou.⁶

After the death of James II, Rizzo was among those who left Cyprus after the troubles of 1473 at court. In 1474 the king’s widow, Queen Caterina Cornaro, made Pietro Davila constable of Cyprus and gave him Rizzo’s villages, Genagra among them, and his house in Ammochostos.⁷

A little later, in a Venetian list of the royal villages of the late 15th century, published by Mas Latrie, “Casal Ienagra” is a royal village, that is, it belonged directly to the state, in the bailiwick of Lefkonoiko, that is, in the administrative district of neighbouring Lefkonoiko.⁸

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Genagra is recorded as a mixed village with 62 property-holding households. Most of their fields were fallow, while those under cultivation were mainly cotton and wheat fields. They had few trees, 45 olives and 20 mulberries, and many animals: 851 sheep and goats, pairs of oxen, cows, horses and 23 camels, as well as beehives.⁹

Churches and monasteries

The village’s Greek Orthodox church, the parish church of the Panagia, dates from the 16th to the 18th century. The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, noted that the village church, on a hill, could be seen from afar and had a medieval cross-in-square plan with a dome, with an aisle added later.¹⁰ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites Loizos Philippou, the church was repaired in 1793 by Archbishop Chrysanthos.¹¹

A little outside the village, to the west, stands the chapel of Agios Georgios, partly cut into the rock, of the 15th or 16th century. It is an Ancient Monument.¹² There is also a newer chapel of Agios Georgios, of the 20th century.

Economy and society

Genagra was a village of cereals and stock-raising. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals, since there was no irrigated land, and kept many sheep and goats, as already in the survey of 1832/33.¹³ The Ammochostos–Lefkosia railway passed through the village; it was built around 1905, mainly to carry the grain of the Mesaoria to the port of Ammochostos.¹⁴ In 1960 the Second Cooperative Credit Society of Genagra was founded.

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites the Cypriot historian of education Ieronymos Peristianis, the first private school of Genagra operated for only a few months in 1875, and the village children went to the monitorial school of neighbouring Lefkonoiko.¹⁵ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of Genagra had 31 pupils and one teacher.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 381 inhabitants in 1881, 423 in 1891, 417 in 1901, 542 in 1911 and 556 in 1921.¹⁶ In 1931 Genagra had 532 inhabitants, 281 Christians and 251 Muslims, and in 1946 613, of whom 329 were Orthodox and 284 Muslims (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 578 inhabitants, 301 Greeks and 277 Turks, and in 1973 221 Greeks and around 250 Turks (an estimate). From 1964 to 1974 there was a post of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force (UNFICYP) in the village.¹⁷

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 186 inhabitants signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 37 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Genagra was taken by the Turkish army. The Greek inhabitants fled as the Turkish army advanced,¹⁸ and the village’s Greek population was ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

No inhabitant of Genagra was recorded as missing. One inhabitant of the village, a civilian, was killed at Gypsou.

The occupation authorities have illegally converted the church of the Panagia into a mosque. The chapels of Agios Georgios have been looted and desecrated, and the 2009 list records the roof of the medieval chapel as fallen; according to Cyprus Religious Heritage, the medieval chapel was restored in 2021–22. In 2022 the Greek Orthodox cemetery around the church of the Panagia was found in ruins, with the crosses of the graves uprooted and scattered.¹⁹