Gerani is a small Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos, in the western part of Karpasia. It lies 27 kilometres north of Ammochostos, at an elevation of 110 metres, on the southern slopes of the Pentadaktylos, four kilometres north of Agios Ilias and about five kilometres south of Kantara.¹ In the 1960 census it had 211 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

The official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer) writes the name “Gerani”; the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia writes it “Geranin”. In the Venetian list of the royal villages of the late 15th century the village is written “Ierani”.²

Founding and first records

The earliest written record of Gerani found dates from the late 15th century. In a Venetian statistical memorandum published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, the “Casal Ierani” is listed among the royal villages of the bailiwick of Karpasia, the administrative district to which it belonged. It was thus a royal village, belonging directly to the state and not to a feudal lord. In the list it is written immediately after Trikomo, and a little further down the neighbouring village of Spathariko is entered.³

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Gerani is entered as a mixed village, with ten property-holding households. Among the owners was a priest. They had cotton fields, barren fields and a threshing floor, 146 olive trees, about 150 sheep, cows and oxen.⁴

Churches and monasteries

The parish church of the village, dedicated to Agia Aikaterini, was built around 1900 at the eastern edge of the village. Around it lay the old cemetery; the new one was opened around 1954, a little further south. In the centre of the village stands the church of Agios Georgios, built in 1950.⁵

About 700 metres west of the village, on the top of a hill overlooking the area, stands the chapel of Panagia Evangelistria.⁶ The village also had the chapel of Agios Mamas.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals, olives and carobs. There was no irrigated land, and much of the land was left uncultivated. In 1973 about 840 sheep, 86 goats and 15 oxen were kept in the village.⁷ A co-operative credit society worked in the village from 1944, and a co-operative grocery from 1956.

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of the village had 15 pupils and one teacher.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 141 inhabitants in 1881, 173 in 1891, 217 in 1901, 252 in 1911 and 301 in 1921.⁸ In 1931 it had 366 inhabitants, all Christians, and in 1946 358, all Orthodox (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 211 inhabitants and in 1973 170, all of them Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite for union with Greece 163 inhabitants signed. The EOKA Fighters’ Register lists 50 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or assisted the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Gerani was occupied by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

One inhabitant of the village, a civilian, was recorded as missing. He disappeared in the village itself, and his remains have been identified. One more civilian from Gerani, who lived in Spathariko, was killed there.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Agios Georgios into a mosque. All the crosses and the bells were removed, and a mihrab was built into the south wall. When a new mosque was built in the village around 2016, the church was abandoned. The church of Agia Aikaterini was demolished: it was in ruins in 2004–2007, by 2008 it had disappeared, and on its site and that of the old cemetery there is now the car park of the new mosque. The doors, windows and bell of the chapel of Panagia Evangelistria were removed, and the new cemetery is in ruins, with the grave crosses scattered.⁹