Melouseia is a Turkish community in the occupied part of the Larnaka district. It lies 22 kilometres south-east of Lefkosia, at an elevation of 120 metres, and its northern boundary was also the boundary between the districts of Lefkosia and Larnaka.¹ In the 1960 census it had 308 inhabitants, all of them Turks.

Name

The 19th-century Greek scholar Athanasios Sakellarios, who wrote on the history and language of Cyprus, writes the village “Melouchia” and considers that it very probably continues the name of ancient Melouchia, attested by an inscription of the place (see Archaeological sites). He notes that Cypriots pronounce “ch” differently before the vowels e, i and y, which explains the present form of the name.² In the Middle Ages the village is written “Meluchia”.³ The old form also survives in a place name on the village land, “Merras tis Meloucheias”, recorded by the official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer).⁴

Archaeological sites

Sakellarios describes, a little more than a quarter of an hour west of the village, ruins of an ancient city, as he calls them, which were called Agios Fotios after a ruined church among them. There a dedicatory inscription in Greek was found, in which the inhabitants of the place are called Melouchean:

Μηλουχεατῶν [ἡ πόλις ἀνέ]θηκεν, ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ.

That is: “The city of the Meloucheans dedicated it. With good fortune.”⁵ According to the British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the historic monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, antiquities bearing the name of the Meloucheans had also been found at Melouseia by the 19th-century American consul and collector of antiquities Luigi Palma di Cesnola.⁶ The inscription shows that the inhabitants of ancient Melouchia wrote in Greek and made dedications as a community.

In 1962 the Department of Antiquities investigated in the village a tomb of the Classical Greek period, with small jugs and plates of ordinary clay.⁷

Frankish rule, Venetian rule

Jeffery writes that Melouseia stands on the site of the medieval village “Mellucia”.⁸ In a Venetian memorandum of the late 15th century, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, “Casal Meluchia” is listed among the villages of the count of Tripoli. According to Mas Latrie, the count was Jean Tafures, who was a simple boat-owner at the Salines when he helped the young James, the later King James II, to escape to Rhodes. From then on he was one of James’s most devoted followers, and James rewarded him with many fiefs and made him count of Tripoli and captain of Famagusta.⁹

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Melouseia belonged to the district of the Mesaoria and is recorded as a Muslim village, with 10 property-holding households. Their land was almost all uncultivated, without a single tree, and the owners had threshing floors, 15 beehives, 270 sheep and goats, oxen and cows.¹⁰ Sakellarios found it, in the 19th century, inhabited almost only by Muslims, and notes that Athienou and the surrounding villages then produced the best honey in Cyprus.¹¹

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, with very little rain, before 1974 cereals and fodder crops were grown on the village land. Stock-raising was well developed: in 1973 the village had 818 sheep, 938 goats and 233 cows.¹²

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 82 inhabitants in 1881, 97 in 1891, 127 in 1901, 194 in 1911 and 211 in 1921.¹³ In 1931 Melouseia had 217 inhabitants, all of them Muslims, and in 1946 343, of whom 2 were Orthodox and 341 Muslims (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 308 inhabitants, all of them Turks, and in 1973 around 450 (estimate).