Kaimakli was a large Greek community of the district of Lefkosia, and since 1968 it has been a parish of the town of Lefkosia. It lies 2 kilometres north-east of Lefkosia, outside the walls of the old town, 130 metres above sea level. It was known throughout Cyprus for its builders, who built churches in many parts of the island. In the 1960 census it had 7,066 inhabitants, 7,042 of them Greeks.¹

Name

The British diplomat and traveller William Turner, who came to Lefkosia in 1815, writes the name “Kaimaklee”. Until the 1960s official documents called it “Mega Kaimakli” (Great Kaimakli), to distinguish it from neighbouring Omorfita, which in the censuses of 1931 and 1946 was recorded as “Mikro Kaimakli” (Little Kaimakli).²

Founding and first records

Under its present name Kaimakli does not appear in sources before Turkish rule. The British architect George Jeffery, who described the historic monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, noted that on older maps a settlement “Micti” seems to have stood on its site, and that the small church of the Archangel, at the eastern edge of the village, belonged to this older settlement.³

In a Venetian list of villages of the late 15th century, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, Omorfita is recorded together with a village “Misochilepi”. According to one view, mentioned by the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the Misokelefsi of the medieval lists was Kaimakli. According to the same source, the old core of the settlement lay around the church of Agia Varvara, and from there the village spread in all directions.⁴

Turkish rule

In 1815 Turner mentioned Kaimakli among the villages around Lefkosia, all of which, as he wrote, were insignificant. In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Kaimakli has 80 property-holding households, Christian and Muslim. Their property was mainly fields and animals: almost 1,000 sheep, another 500 sheep and goats, oxen and a few cows. No trees are recorded.⁵

British rule

In the early 20th century, according to Jeffery, Kaimakli was still a separate village, with its own railway halt, but in practice almost a suburb of Lefkosia. It was considered the centre of the builders who went round Cyprus building churches.⁶

Churches and monasteries

The main church of Kaimakli is dedicated to Saint Varvara and stands in the old core of the settlement. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, it was built in the early 20th century and has a number of interesting architectural features. Near it, according to the same source, is the small convent of the Transfiguration, a dependency of the monastery of Stavrovouni.⁷

The small church of the Archangel, at the eastern edge of the village, has a single aisle, with a narthex to the west. Old porcelain plates are set into the plaster of its vault, as in many old churches of Cyprus. Jeffery saw two medieval tombstones inside it, with the figures of a man and a woman and coats of arms with three crosses; in his time it served mainly as the cemetery chapel.⁸

Economy and society

Kaimakli was famous for its master builders. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, its builders specialised in building churches and were called to many parts of Cyprus. According to the same source, the village was formerly also an important weaving centre, mainly of alatzia, the coarse loom-woven cotton cloth, while its fields were sown with cereals and fodder crops. Around Agia Varvara a number of houses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries survive, many built of mud brick, examples of the vernacular architecture of the time. Until 1973 Kaimakli had more industrial units than any other place in the district after Lefkosia itself.⁹

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites the Cypriot scholar Ieronymos Peristianis, education at Kaimakli began in the 1820s. In 1838–39 Christofis Marathovouniotis taught the “common letters” in his house. Around 1858 the committee of the church of Agia Varvara built the first community school in the church precinct, where the teacher Dimofontis applied the monitorial method for one year. The school often closed for lack of a teacher, until from 1885 it operated regularly, with Dimitrios Karakasis from the Dardanelles as teacher. The old building in the church precinct was used until the 1960s.¹⁰

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Kaimakli had 957 inhabitants in 1881, 1,093 in 1891, 1,392 in 1901, 1,699 in 1911 and 1,860 in 1921.¹¹ In 1931 Kaimakli had 2,474 inhabitants, 2,419 Christians and 55 Muslims, and in 1946 3,683, of whom 3,615 were Orthodox, 56 Muslims and 12 of other religions. After 1946 the population grew quickly, mainly, according to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, because many people from the countryside of the district settled there (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion).¹² In the 1960 census it had 7,066 inhabitants: 7,042 Greeks, 10 Armenians, 4 Turks, 4 Maronites, 3 English and 3 others. In 1973 it had 8,789 Greek inhabitants.

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 2,092 inhabitants of Kaimakli signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 60 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 the Turkish army occupied only part of Kaimakli. The settlement, with its old core around Agia Varvara, remained free. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, however, the greater part of its land, to the east, has been under Turkish military occupation ever since, and a smaller part, to the north and west, lies within the buffer zone. Kaimakli thus lost most of its fields, and the settlement can now expand only to the south.¹³

The Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the Greek owners from returning to their properties in the occupied part. The 20th-century chapel of Agios Dimitrios also stands there.

Five soldiers from Kaimakli were recorded as missing; they vanished elsewhere, in the areas of Lapithos (two), Neo Chorio Kythreas and Agios Ermolaos, and at Keryneia, and their remains have all been identified. Eight dead of 1974 are recorded on the land of Kaimakli, all soldiers, killed in the area of Kaimakli, one of them in the area of the Grigoras post. After the invasion Kaimakli received refugees, and according to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia a small government housing estate was built in its area to house them.