Kazafani is a large mixed community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 3 kilometres south-east of Keryneia, at an elevation of 60 metres, in the coastal plain of Keryneia, below Belapais. The village preserves the medieval church of the Panagia Potamitissa, which is an Ancient Monument. In the 1960 census it had 1,063 inhabitants, of whom 458 were Greeks and 598 Turks.

Name

In the medieval sources the village is called “casal Pifani” or “casal Piphani”, that is, “the village of Pifani”; casal was the word for a village in the documents of Frankish and Venetian rule. The editor of Bustron’s chronicle identifies Pifani with the name Epifanios.¹

In the sources of Turkish rule the name is written “Casapifani” (1596) and “Casafani” (1683).² The “Kazafaniostrata”, the road to Kazafani on the land of Kato and Pano Dikomo, also took its name from the village.³

Founding and first records

The first written mention of the village is found in the 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas. In his list of the saints of Cyprus he writes that Saint Epiktitos lived as an ascetic in the village and that on its land, towards the north, there was an ossuary full of relics of the Saints Fanentes (“Φανέντες”), that is, “the Revealed” (“Φανερωθέντες”). The relics, according to Machairas, had dried and stuck together like stone, and these saints were among the three hundred who had come to Cyprus fleeing from Syria. The same is recorded in the 16th century by the Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron, who speaks of a cave full of relics of the saints “Phanondes” on the village’s land.⁴ The neighbouring village to the east bears the name of the same saint, Agios Epiktitos.

Archaeological sites

At the site of Mines at Kazafani the Cypriot archaeologist Porphyrios Dikaios carried out a rescue excavation in March 1934 of a sanctuary deposit, that is, a pit in which old votive offerings were buried. The finds belong to the Archaic and Classical ancient Greek periods: terracotta figurines and two limestone statuettes of boys, offerings of the 5th century BC. The figurines, some imported and some of local manufacture, have stylistic affinities with Soloi, Lapithos, Idalion and Salamis, and show contacts between the sanctuary and the city-kingdoms of Cyprus.⁵

In 1963 workers of the Electricity Authority, digging a pit for a pole at the entrance to the village from Keryneia, brought to light a tomb of the pre-Greek cemetery at the site of Agios Andronikos. The tomb, with two chambers, was excavated under the supervision of Kyriakos Nicolaou, curator of the Cyprus Museum, and yielded more than a thousand grave goods: local pottery, some Mycenaean stirrup jars, Syrian vessels and a terracotta model of a ship 45 centimetres long. In 1971 the Department of Antiquities excavated two more tombs of the cemetery, which had been robbed in antiquity but still contained hundreds of objects, among them Mycenaean vases, two Minoan stirrup jars, a terracotta group of a man beside a bull and a bronze belt. The vessels from the Aegean and Syria show contacts with the Mycenaean world, Crete and the eastern Mediterranean.⁶

Frankish and Venetian rule

In the late 15th century, shortly after Cyprus passed to the Venetians, “Casal Pifani” was a royal village, that is, it belonged directly to the state and not to a feudal lord. It is recorded by a Venetian statistical memorandum, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, among the fourteen villages of the bailiwick of Lapithos, the administrative district to which it belonged, together with Lapithos, Vasileia, Myrtou and Klepini.⁷

Turkish rule

In the first years of Turkish rule Maronites lived in the village. The Italian Jesuit Girolamo Dandini, who passed through Cyprus in 1596 as the Pope’s envoy to the Maronites of Lebanon, records “Casapifani” among the nineteen villages of Cyprus where Maronites lived, with at least one parish each. In 1683 the Dutch traveller Cornelis van Bruyn, who visited the neighbouring abbey of Belapais, notes that the village had very few houses. The Cypriot archimandrite and historian Kyprianos, in his work of 1788, lists Kazafani among the villages from which the corps of Janissaries was paid: their land gave a tithe of all its produce and each inhabitant paid one piastre a year, the tax called “spentza”.⁸

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33 only those who owned property were recorded, not all the inhabitants. Kazafani appears there as a mixed village, with 94 property-holding households, one of the largest in the Keryneia district. These households had grain fields, cotton fields, a few vineyards and orchards, more than 2,000 olive trees and as many carob trees, as well as mulberry, almond and orange trees, and rights to running water. Ten olive presses are recorded in the village, one of them in ruins, and two carob mills. The animals were mainly goats, more than 600, and oxen for ploughing, and there were also 84 beehives. Among the owners two converts to Islam are also recorded, Ahmet and Mohamet.⁹

Churches and monasteries

The parish church of the Greek inhabitants, dedicated to the Archangel Michael, was built in 1863 at the northern edge of the village.¹⁰

The oldest church of the village, the Panagia Potamitissa or Panagia tou Potamou (Our Lady of the River), of the 16th century, is an Ancient Monument. The British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, describes it as a small, well-preserved church in the style of the 15th century, with a pointed vault of dressed stone, surrounded on the north and west sides by a narthex in the form of a portico. At the south end of the narthex survived a medieval wall tomb under an arched canopy, with a tombstone incised, in the manner of the 14th century, with the figure of a bearded man in civilian dress, a round cap and a long robe. The tomb has no inscription or date and was once painted. The iconostasis was of the usual Venetian type, in blue and gold.¹¹

The village also had the chapels of Agios Andronikos and of the Apostle Paul, both of the 16th century; the chapel of the Apostle Paul had been converted into a mosque under Turkish rule. The government closed the old cemetery of the village on 21 April 1893, and in the new cemetery, half a kilometre north-east of the church of the Archangel, the chapel of Agios Georgios was built in 1894.¹²

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew citrus fruit, mainly lemons and citrons, in the irrigated fields north of the village, as well as cereals, some vegetables, olives, carobs and persimmons. Stock-breeding had also developed; in 1973 Kazafani had the third largest number of poultry in the district, after Keryneia and Sysklipos. The same encyclopaedia records that the village was once famous for its pastelli, made from thickened carob juice.¹³ In 1960 the Second Cooperative Credit Society of Kazafani was founded.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 497 inhabitants in 1881, 551 in 1891, 601 in 1901, 736 in 1911 and 754 in 1921.¹⁴ In 1931 the village had 748 inhabitants, 333 Christians and 415 Muslims, and in 1946 962, of whom 447 were Orthodox, 512 Muslims and 3 others (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 1,063 inhabitants, 458 Greeks, 598 Turks, 3 English and 4 others, and in 1973 455 Greeks and about 650 Turks (estimate). According to the same encyclopaedia, a few years before 1974 the settlement had begun to spread along the roads to Keryneia and the surrounding villages.¹⁵ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school had 42 pupils and two teachers.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 248 inhabitants of the village signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 20 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Kazafani was captured by the Turkish army. The European Commission of Human Rights, in its 1976 report, records the complaint of the Republic of Cyprus that on 2 August 1974 about 600 people, mainly women, children and old people, from Karmi, Trimithi, Thermeia, Kazafani and Agios Georgios were taken to the cease-fire line and expelled.¹⁶ Many Greek inhabitants remained enclaved in the village; according to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia they numbered 107 in November 1975 and 99 in February 1976, and they too were gradually expelled to the free areas.¹⁷ Thus the Greek population of the village was subjected to ethnic cleansing, and today no enclaved person lives there.¹⁸ The Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

On the land of Kazafani four dead of 1974 are recorded, one soldier and three civilians, in the village itself and in its area.

The 2009 list of the occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus records the church of the Archangel Michael and the Panagia Potamitissa as desecrated and looted. The chapel of Agios Georgios was desecrated and looted and is today in ruins, and the chapel of Agios Andronikos was desecrated and is used as a bakery’s garage.