Karmi is a Greek community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 6 kilometres west of Keryneia, 310 metres above sea level, on the northern slopes of the Pentadaktylos, built like an amphitheatre on a steep green hillside. Its land rose to the ridge and included the forest of Karmi and, to the south-east, the medieval castle of Agios Ilarion.¹ In the 1960 census it had 653 inhabitants, 650 of them Greeks.

Name

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites Simos Menardos, the village took its name from the Latin order of the Carmelites, which had monasteries in Cyprus in the years of Frankish rule. Menardos, following the French art historian Camille Enlart, attributes to the Carmelites the ruined monastery west of the castle of Agios Ilarion, after which, in his view, the village too was named. No written evidence that the village belonged to the order has been found.² In the mid-18th century a British traveller writes the name “Carmi”.

Founding and first records

According to a local tradition recorded by the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the first inhabitant of the place was a shepherd, who built his fold near the cool spring of the village. According to the same encyclopaedia, in the late 16th century, after the capture of Keryneia by the Turks in 1570, inhabitants of the town settled at Karmi.³

Karmi is not mentioned in the surviving 15th-century lists of fiefs and royal villages. One of the first certain written mentions is by the British consul at Aleppo Alexander Drummond, who toured Cyprus in April 1750. On his way to the castle of Agios Ilarion, he found the western side of the mountain so steep that he left his baggage at “Carmi” and climbed up from the east.⁴

Archaeological sites

On the land of Karmi, north of the village, at the localities of Palialona and Lapatsa, lie two pre-Greek cemeteries with rock-cut tombs. They were excavated in 1961 by an Australian expedition led by the archaeologist James R. B. Stewart, under licence from the Department of Antiquities, and were fully published in 2009. Lapatsa was used earlier, while Palialona went on receiving burials for several more centuries. The cemetery of Palialona is a scheduled Ancient Monument.⁵

At Palialona, on the wall of the passage leading to Tomb 6, a human figure carved in relief in the rock was found, 116 centimetres high, beside the entrance to the chamber. It is the only relief figure known from the Early Bronze Age in Cyprus, and the front of the tomb is carved so as to resemble a house. Researchers believe that the tomb also served as a place for the cult of the dead. In an unrobbed tomb, 11B, a polychrome cup of the so-called Kamares style, made in Minoan Crete, was found together with a spearhead. The cup shows that the place had contacts with Crete, and it is now in the Cyprus Museum.⁶

In 1962 two more tombs were excavated. At Laoura a tomb that had already been robbed yielded sherds of local vases and of Mycenaean vases, a bronze pin and a knife, and revealed a later cemetery, from the time when vases from the Mycenaean Greek world were reaching Cyprus. At Founki a tomb of the archaic ancient Greek period contained small amphorae, cups and jugs.⁷

Antiquity

The tombs of Palialona and Lapatsa show that the area of Karmi was already inhabited in the pre-Greek period, by a community with contacts as far as Crete. The Mycenaean sherds of Laoura and the tomb of Founki show that habitation continued into the ancient Greek period.

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

Above the village, on its land, stood a Greek Orthodox monastery dedicated to Saint Ilarion, which later became a castle. The chapel of Agios Ilarion, inside the castle, dates from the 11th century, the middle medieval Greek period.⁸

Frankish and Venetian rule

In 1228 the regent John of Ibelin turned the monastery of Agios Ilarion into a fortified refuge for the young King Henry I and his supporters. Thus the castle of Agios Ilarion rose on the land of Karmi.⁹

Turkish rule

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, local traditions tell of the brave resistance of the inhabitants against Turks who wanted to carry off women of the village, and the people of Karmi were also known as “Souliotes”, because they repelled the attempts of Turks to settle in their village.¹⁰

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Karmi is recorded as a mixed village with 40 property-holding households. It was rich in olives: of its almost 3,700 trees, 3,055 were olives and most of the rest carobs, and nine olive mills operated in the village. The inhabitants also had wheat fields, vineyards and mulberries, 385 goats, a few oxen and 38 beehives.¹¹

Churches and monasteries

The village’s Greek Orthodox church, in its centre, is dedicated to the Panagia Karmiotissa and dates from the 18th or 19th century. According to the Union of Communities of Keryneia District, the inhabitants called it the Panagia Chrysokarmiotissa and celebrated its feast on 8 September and on the Tuesday after Easter.¹²

The chapel of Agios Ilarion in the castle is part of the Ancient Monument of the castle. Higher up the mountain stand the chapel of the Prophet Elias, of the 16th or 17th century, and a cave also dedicated to the Prophet Elias. Around the village there were also the chapels of the Sotiras, of the 20th century, of the Archangel, Agios Panteleimon, Agios Georgios, Agios Efstratios, whom the inhabitants called Agios Axistratis, and Agia Marina.¹³ The Greek Orthodox cemetery lies about half a kilometre south of the centre, on the road from Keryneia.¹⁴

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals, olives, carobs and a few lemon trees, while much of the land remained uncultivated and stock-raising was almost non-existent.¹⁵ According to the Union of Communities of Keryneia District, many inhabitants worked in building in Keryneia and supplemented their income from their olives and carobs.¹⁶ In 1944 the Karmi Cooperative Credit Society was founded. Before 1974 the village’s setting and traditional architecture had begun to attract interest for tourist development, and holiday houses were being built around the village.¹⁷

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village’s first teacher was Ioannis Georgiadis, known as Scholastikos, from Karavas, who settled at Karmi and taught there from 1883 to 1894, having previously taught at Keryneia and Lapithos.¹⁸ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of Karmi had 47 pupils and 2 teachers.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 404 inhabitants in 1881, 474 in 1891, 518 in 1901, 673 in 1911 and 747 in 1921.¹⁹ In 1931 Karmi had 672 inhabitants, all Christians, and in 1946 741, all Orthodox (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 653 inhabitants, of whom 650 were Greeks and 3 English, and in 1973 528 Greeks.

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 432 inhabitants of Karmi signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 31 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Karmi was taken by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

Four inhabitants of Karmi, two soldiers and two civilians, were recorded as missing. None vanished in the village; they vanished in the area of the 2nd milestone of the Keryneia–Kazafani road, at Kazafani and at Agios Georgios Keryneias. The remains of three have been located and identified, while one is still missing. One more civilian from Karmi was wounded and died in Lefkosia General Hospital. On the land of Karmi six dead of 1974 are recorded, all soldiers, killed in the fighting in the mountains of Agios Ilarion and the Pentadaktylos, among them at Aetofolia.

The illegal Turkish authorities have allowed a British citizen to convert the church of the Panagia Karmiotissa into a museum, and the crosses have been removed from its roof and bell tower.²⁰ The chapel of the Prophet Elias and the cave of the Prophet Elias have been shut inside a Turkish military camp, and have been desecrated and looted. The chapel of the Sotiras has been desecrated, looted and seriously damaged.