Mia Milia is a large Greek community in the occupied part of the Lefkosia district. It lies 6 kilometres north-east of Lefkosia, at an elevation of 110 metres, in the Mesaoria plain, and its land extended north to the foothills of the Pentadaktylos. The Pediaios river runs past the village.¹ In the 1960 census it had 1,076 inhabitants, of whom 1,072 were Greeks.

Name

The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, writes the name “Miamilia”.²

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, 22 property-holding households are recorded at Mia Milia, all of them Christian. Among the owners was also a priest. The holdings were grain fields, large stretches of fallow land and threshing floors, with 28 olive trees. The animals were more than a thousand sheep and goats, and a few oxen and horses, that is, stock-breeding already had a large place in the life of the village.³

British rule

In the early 20th century the carriage road from Lefkosia to Kythrea passed through Mia Milia, and Jeffery notes that the village had a railway station, amid vegetation that bore witness to the presence of water in the arid Mesaoria.⁴

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox church of the village, almost at the centre of the old settlement, is dedicated to Saint John the Theologian. It was built in 1894 as a single-aisled basilica with some Gothic elements; its north doorway appears to be influenced by the architecture of the Bedesten of Lefkosia. The bell tower was added, according to its inscription, in 1956.⁵ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the church celebrated its feast on 26 September with a large festival.⁶ The village cemetery lies about 100 metres south of the church.⁷

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew cereals, fodder crops and vegetables. Three kilometres north of the settlement the Mia Milia dam, with a capacity of 355,000 cubic metres, irrigated 174 hectares. Stock-breeding was well developed: in 1973 the village had more than 1,500 sheep, almost 800 goats and more than 4,000 poultry.⁸

The soil of Mia Milia was suitable for bricks and roof tiles. According to the same encyclopaedia, every summer the village’s “kaminia” (kilns) worked, where the well-known bricks and tiles of Mia Milia were made, with workers from the village and the surrounding villages, among them gymnasium pupils. Until about 1955 there was a pottery workshop at the entrance to the village, where the “kouppárides” (potters) made jugs, cups and flowerpots on the wheel. South of the village was the Mia Milia industrial area, the main one of Lefkosia before 1974, with 32 industrial units in 1972, where a good number of inhabitants worked.⁹

In 1943 the Mia Milia Cooperative Credit Society was founded and in 1956 the Mia Milia Cooperative Grocery. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had two associations, the sports club “Proodos” and the “National Union Dikefalos”, and many young men played football in Lefkosia teams.¹⁰

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village school, in its northern part, was built in 1963–64.¹¹ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Mia Milia had 172 pupils and 5 teachers.

Population

Mia Milia, close to Lefkosia, grew steadily. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 268 inhabitants in 1881, 302 in 1891, 327 in 1901, 395 in 1911 and 452 in 1921.¹² In 1946 it had 771 inhabitants, all of them Orthodox (the 1946 census recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 1,076 inhabitants, of whom 1,072 were Greeks, one a Maronite and three others, and in 1973 1,381 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 442 inhabitants of Mia Milia signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 8 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Mia Milia was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek population was subjected to ethnic cleansing. Among the written statements examined by the European Commission of Human Rights in its 1976 report is one from Mia Milia, by an inhabitant who was expelled from his home.¹³ Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

Twenty-two inhabitants of Mia Milia, 15 civilians and 7 soldiers, were recorded as missing. Thirteen went missing in the village itself; the other 9 in the Kaimakli area, at Agios Georgios Keryneias, at Kythrea, at the fifth mile of the Keryneia–Karavas road and in the Agios Georgios–Glykiotissa area. The remains of 6 have been located and identified; the remaining 16 are still missing.

Two other inhabitants, both civilians, were killed elsewhere, one in the area of Trachoni Kythreas and the other at an unknown place.

In Mia Milia and its area 13 dead of 1974 are recorded, 11 soldiers and 2 civilians; one of them was wounded in the area and died later in Larnaca hospital.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Agios Ioannis into a mosque. The crosses and bells were removed, the cross of the bell tower was replaced with a crescent and the south entrance was walled up.¹⁴