Kourou Monastiri is a small Turkish community in the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 18 kilometres east of Lefkosia, at an elevation of 90 metres, in the Mesaoria plain, and its eastern boundary reaches the border of the Ammochostos district. In the 1960 census it had 166 inhabitants, all of them Turks.

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Kourou Monastiri is recorded as a Muslim village with 12 property-owning households. Its land was almost entirely fields, with a garden, threshing floors and running water. Thirty-nine olive trees are recorded, and the owners had more than 350 sheep and goats and six oxen.¹

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 cereals and fodder crops were grown on the village’s land, and in 1973 the inhabitants kept 819 sheep and 180 goats. The Cyprus railway, which linked Ammochostos with Lefkosia, passed to the south of the village.²

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 64 inhabitants in 1881, 71 in 1891, 93 in 1901, 117 in 1911 and 144 in 1921.³ In 1931 Kourou Monastiri had 157 inhabitants, one Christian and 156 Muslims, and in 1946 176, of whom one was Orthodox and 175 Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded religion only). In 1960 it had 166 inhabitants, all Turks, and in 1973 around 200 (estimate).