Karavostasi, together with neighbouring Xeros, is a large, mainly Greek community in the occupied part of the district of Lefkosia, in the geographical region of Morfou. It lies 16 kilometres south-west of Morfou, 10 metres above sea level, on the shore of Morfou Bay. It is built beside the ruins of ancient Soloi, one of the most important cities of ancient Cyprus, and in the 20th century it was the port of the mines of the area. In the 1960 census it had 1,510 inhabitants, 1,111 of them Greeks and 333 Turks.

Name

In the years of Frankish rule the place was known by the name of Saint Afxivios, the first bishop of Soloi: the 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas writes “Άγιος Αυξίβιος”, and the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron “Santo Euxivio”. The English traveller Richard Pococke, who passed through in 1738, heard the place called “Aligora”.¹ The philologist Athanasios Sakellarios writes in 1890 that Soloi was then called Karavostasi or Palaia Chora, and the official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer) records Palia Chora as an ancient site on the village’s land. Xeros has the same name as the Xeros river, which flows into the sea beside it.² In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950 the inhabitants signed under the name “Neoi Soloi” (New Soloi).

Founding and first records

The present settlement is new. Sakellarios writes that there was no village on Soloi and that around 1850 the warehouses, the “Ergastiria”, began to be built beside it, where the produce of Solea and Marathasa was gathered for export. The Italian-American consul and antiquities collector Luigi Palma di Cesnola, around 1870, saw a large circular structure, most probably the theatre, being pulled down to build the new warehouses of Karavostasi. The settlement grew around the skala, that is, the anchorage, and in the 20th century around the mining installations at Xeros. The Improvement Board of Karavostasi included Xeros and Potamos tou Kampou, to the west.³

Archaeological sites

Soloi spreads over the hills and the plain south-west of the village, around the old harbour, which has become a marsh. The Department of Antiquities has scheduled as Ancient Monuments the site and the remains of the ancient city, as well as the theatre and the ancient tombs. The Gazetteer records here the place names Theatron Solon, Palia Chora and Cholades.⁴

The first excavations took place in 1883, when the German archaeologist Max Ohnefalsch-Richter opened tombs for the Cyprus Museum and excavated a sanctuary of a female deity, most probably Aphrodite, with clay offerings such as ring dances and flute players. From 1927 to 1931 the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, with Alfred Westholm and Einar Gjerstad, uncovered the theatre, cut into the slope below the acropolis, with seats for about 4,000 spectators, and at Cholades six temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. On the summit of the acropolis Gjerstad found the foundations of a Greek temple of the late 6th century BC, and parts of an archaic Doric temple were found in the fill of the theatre. The theatre was later restored. In 1930 the same expedition excavated at Mersinaki, on the coast west of Soloi, pits full of offerings from a sanctuary of Apollo and Athena, from about 500 to 50 BC, among them a clay group of Athena mounting her chariot.⁵

From 1964 to 1974 the expedition of Laval University of Canada, directed by Jean des Gagniers, excavated at Soloi. It found tombs of the geometric ancient Greek period, which pushed the beginning of the city back to the 9th century BC, houses of the 6th century BC, a great colonnaded street with shops leading to the agora, a nymphaeum, that is, a monumental fountain, and a life-size bronze head of the 2nd century AD, now displayed in the Cyprus Museum. North-east of the theatre it uncovered two successive basilicas with mosaic floors, and on the terrace below the temple of the acropolis a palace of the Ptolemaic period. In 1972 the Department of Antiquities carried out rescue excavations of 28 tombs exposed by levelling works, with finds ranging from the Mycenaean pottery of the 13th century BC to the archaic ancient Greek period. Other tombs, from the classical Greek to the Roman period, were found in 1967 at Agios Kournoutas. In 2005–2006 the occupation regime carried out excavations, without authority, in tombs of the necropolis.⁶

Antiquity

The Greek biographer Plutarch (1st–2nd century AD) relates that the Athenian lawgiver Solon, when he came to Cyprus, was the guest of King Philokypros, who had a small city, Aipeia, built by Demophon, son of Theseus, in a strong but difficult position. Solon persuaded him to move it to the fertile plain below, and Philokypros, to honour him, named the new city Soloi. Plutarch also quotes the verses that Solon himself wrote to the king:⁷

νῦν δὲ σὺ μὲν Σολίοισι πολὺν χρόνον ἐνθάδ᾽ ἀνάσσων τήνδε πόλιν ναίοις καὶ γένος ὑμέτερον

“And now may you reign here over the Solians for a long time, and dwell in this city, you and your line.”

The Greek geographer Strabo (1st century BC) writes that Soloi had a harbour, a river and a sanctuary of Aphrodite and Isis, that it was founded by the Athenians Phaleros and Akamas, and that Stasanor, one of the companions of Alexander the Great, came from here.⁸ The finds show that the city was already flourishing in the geometric ancient Greek period. On an archaic vase from the tombs the Greek name Themistos is incised in the Cypriot syllabary, while an Ionian skyphos and a Corinthian aryballos show contacts with the cities of Ionia and with Corinth.⁹

In 498 BC, when the Cypriots rose together with the Ionians against the Persians, the king of Soloi Aristokypros, son of Philokypros, was killed in battle. The Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC) writes that of all the Cypriot cities Soloi held out longest under siege, and the Persians took it only in the fifth month, by undermining the walls.¹⁰

Ptolemaic Greek (“Hellenistic”) period

Around 250 BC the first temple of the sanctuary at Cholades was built, dedicated to Aphrodite. The sanctuary grew in the years of the Ptolemies with temples of Isis and Sarapis and, according to the researchers, follows the traditional form of the Cypriot sacred enclosure. On the terrace below the temple of the acropolis rose a large building with thick walls, which the excavators took to be a palace.¹¹

Roman period

In the Roman period Soloi took the form its ruins have today: the theatre, according to more recent researchers, was built around AD 200, the main colonnaded street reached the paved agora, and in the first half of the 3rd century the nymphaeum was built beside it, with an inscription naming an emperor of the Severan dynasty. Among the finds from Cholades was a marble head that Westholm identified as a portrait of Agrippina the Elder. Around 1870 Cesnola found at Soloi an inscription which, according to the British architect George Jeffery, is believed to mention Sergius Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus in the time of the Apostles.¹²

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

Tradition holds Saint Afxivios to have been the first bishop of Soloi. His life, preserved by the 18th-century French church historian Michel Le Quien, says that he was baptised by John Mark, the companion of the Apostle Barnabas, and that he shepherded the church of Soloi for about fifty years. Machairas names him among the holy bishops of Cyprus. Bishops of Soloi took part in the ecumenical councils of Ephesus (431), Constantinople (680/81) and Nicaea (787).¹³

In the early medieval Greek period, in the late 4th century, a large five-aisled basilica with polychrome mosaics was built north-east of the theatre. In the 5th century it was succeeded by a three-aisled basilica, 52 by 30 metres. The houses of the lower city were inhabited until the 7th century. Later a small chapel was built inside the central aisle of the basilica, and a cemetery spread around it.¹⁴

Frankish and Venetian rule

Under Frankish rule the Greek bishop of the Lefkosia area bore the title of bishop of Solia. The anchorage of Agios Afxivios was one of the few harbours of the north coast. In the war with the Genoese, in 1373, the Genoese galleys plundered the coasts, but, according to Bustron, here they could do no harm, because the place was guarded by the constable James with 300 horsemen and 500 francomati on foot, that is, free peasants. Later, under the agreements of King James I with the Genoese, ships from the ports of Asia Minor were no longer allowed to put in at Agios Afxivios or at Pentageia. On 2 February 1441 Helena Palaiologina, daughter of the despot of the Morea, who was coming to marry King John II, landed here.¹⁵

Bustron describes the ruins of Soloi in the 16th century: tombs with rings and earrings, marble columns and ruins of churches, and the harbour silted up. He also writes that a marble sarcophagus with warriors on horseback in relief was found there, which the Venetian lieutenant Giovanni Renier sent to Venice in 1558.¹⁶

Turkish rule

In 1738 Pococke still saw at Soloi the ruins of a semicircular building on the slope and, in the plain, three huge piers with Corinthian pilasters, which he took for the temple of Aphrodite and Isis.¹⁷ In the 19th century the ruins became a quarry. Cesnola writes that boats from the opposite coasts of Asia Minor unloaded timber and loaded dressed stones, inscriptions and sculptures from Soloi, and Jeffery that the anchorage of Karavostasi had long been used by caiques coming to load building material.¹⁸

British rule

At the beginning of British rule Karavostasi was a small landing place. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the road from Lefkosia was completed in 1900, and in the following years the roads to Lefka and, along the coast, to Pomos and Polis Chrysochous were opened. In the 20th century the place was transformed by the mines of Mavrovouni, Skouriotissa and Apliki: the ore came by railway to the processing installations at Xeros and was loaded onto ships from the port of Karavostasi. The mines, the installations and the port gave work to many inhabitants of the community and of the villages around.¹⁹

Churches and monasteries

The community’s parish church, at Xeros, is dedicated to Agios Nikolaos and was built in the 20th century.

At Soloi the 2009 list records the church of Agios Afxivios together with the basilica. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the inhabitants called the saint “Ai Xifios”, and his ruined church survived until 1974.²⁰

Economy and society

Karavostasi receives little rain, but it lies over the great underground aquifer of Morfou, and boreholes allowed irrigated land to spread. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly citrus, oranges, lemons, grapefruit and citrons, and a few cereals, and had a few sheep and goats. Most, however, lived from the mines and the port, and the population rose and fell with ore production.²¹ In 1948 the Karavostasi Cooperative Credit Society was founded, and in 1957 the cooperative groceries of Karavostasi and Xeros.

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of Xeros had 100 pupils and 3 teachers. A technical school also operated at Xeros.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Karavostasi had 38 inhabitants in 1881, 21 in 1891, 29 in 1901, 81 in 1911 and 142 in 1921.²² In 1931 Karavostasi had 395 inhabitants, including those who lived at the port, 301 Christians and 94 Muslims, and Xeros 454, 408 Christians and 46 Muslims. In 1946 Karavostasi together with Xeros had 1,759 inhabitants, of whom 1,443 were Orthodox, 277 Muslims and 39 of other religions (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 1,510 inhabitants: 1,111 Greeks, 333 Turks, 14 Maronites, 23 Britons and 29 others. In 1973 the Greeks numbered 959.

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 883 inhabitants signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 25 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The EOKA fighter Takis Sofokleous came from Xeros.²³ At Mersinaki, near Soloi, the EOKA fighter Charalambos Mouskos fell in 1955 in an ambush against the British.²⁴

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Karavostasi and Xeros were taken by the Turkish army, and their Greek inhabitants were ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent their return. One soldier from the community was recorded as missing at Limnitis, and his remains have been identified. Two soldiers of the community were killed in the area of Lefkosia airport. One civilian was killed on the land of the community, in the area of Soloi.

The excavations of the Laval University expedition were interrupted. The finds and the excavation records of Soloi were lost or seized in the summer of 1974, and where they are is not known.²⁵ According to the Union of Occupied Communities of Lefkosia District, the church of Agios Nikolaos has been looted and illegally converted into a storeroom. The Church of Cyprus list of 2009 records it with serious damage and in danger of collapse.²⁶