Krideia is a Turkish community in the occupied district of Ammochostos, in the Karpasia. It lies 31 kilometres north of Ammochostos, at an elevation of 100 metres, on the southern foothills of the Pentadaktylos; to the north its land rises into the mountain, where part of the Kantara forest also lies.¹ In the 1960 census it had 353 inhabitants, all of them Turks.

Name

The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) writes the name “Κρίδεια, η”, and in a second entry in the plural “Κρίδεια, τα”.² On the British Kitchener map of 1885 and in the 1931 census the village is written “Kridhia”.³ The British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, writes it in 1918 as “Kretia (Kridhia)”.⁴

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Krideia appears as a Muslim village, with 12 property-holding households. The owners had cotton fields, a small vineyard and 25 olive trees, while most of their land was barren or fallow; they also had 150 sheep and a few oxen and horses.⁵

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, until 1974 the village land was sown with cereals and fodder crops and planted with olive and carob trees, and stock-raising was fairly developed: in 1973 the stock-breeders of Krideia kept 963 sheep, 56 cows and 21 oxen. Large areas were uncultivated, covered with pine and mastic.⁶

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 136 inhabitants in 1891, 154 in 1901, 207 in 1911 and 243 in 1921.⁷ In 1931 Krideia had 232 inhabitants, all Muslims, and in 1946 327, also all Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 353 inhabitants, all Turks, and in 1973 about 400 Turkish inhabitants (estimate).