Kalyvakia is a small Turkish community in the occupied part of the Lefkosia district. It lies 19 kilometres north-east of Lefkosia, at an elevation of 190 metres, in the southern foothills of the Pentadaktylos, between Petra tou Digeni and Kornokipos.¹ In the 1960 census it had 221 inhabitants, all of them Turks.

Name

The official gazetteer of Cyprus writes the name “Kalyvakia”. The village is also recorded in the Ottoman land survey of 1832/33.²

Turkish rule

In the land survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Kalyvakia belonged to the district of Kythrea and is listed as a Muslim village, with 12 households holding property. The owners had fields, a garden, eight threshing floors and 33 olive trees, and over 220 sheep, a few goats, oxen and cows.³

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 mainly cereals, olives and carobs were grown on the land of the village, while considerable areas were left uncultivated. Stock-breeding was well developed, as already in the 1832/33 survey: in 1973 the village had 1,073 sheep and 475 goats.⁴

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 96 inhabitants in 1881, 114 in 1891, 73 in 1901, 97 in 1911 and 118 in 1921.⁵ In 1931 Kalyvakia had 160 inhabitants, 4 Christians and 156 Muslims, and in 1946 217, all of them Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 221 inhabitants, all of them Turks, and in 1973 around 300 Turks (estimate).