Patriki is a Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos, at the western end of the Karpasia peninsula. It lies 28 kilometres north of Ammochostos, at an elevation of 30 metres, a little north of Gastria.¹ Two built tombs of the Archaic ancient Greek period were excavated on its land. In the 1960 census it had 581 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

According to the Patriki Community Council, most of the inhabitants believed that the village took its name from the patricians, the aristocratic class of ancient Rome.² In the Italian sources of the 15th century the name is written “Patrichi”, and the English traveller Richard Pococke wrote it “Patrick” in 1738.³

Founding and first records

Patriki first appears in a written source in the 1460s, as “Patrichi”, in the list of the fiefs of King James II preserved by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron.⁴ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, it is said that the village originally stood about one and a half kilometres further east and was later moved to its present site.⁵ On the village’s land, to the north-east, the official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer) records the place-name Palion Patriki (“Old Patriki”).⁶

Archaeological sites

In 1970 and 1971 the Department of Antiquities, led by the Cypriot archaeologist Vassos Karageorghis, carried out rescue excavations in the ancient cemetery between Patriki and Avgolida. The first tomb, already partly looted by illicit diggers, had a rectangular chamber of dressed limestone blocks and a stepped entrance passage. Inside were found iron fire-dogs and about eighteen iron spits (obeloi), and above the roof the remains of an animal of the horse family, buried with pottery. The second tomb, excavated in 1971, had been looted even more; it had a chamber with a pitched stone roof, a raised stone bench and an entrance passage five metres long. Scholars date both tombs to the Archaic ancient Greek period and compare their architecture with the royal tombs of Salamis. The built tomb is today an Ancient Monument.⁷

About fifty metres north of the first tomb a large pit was found, full of broken terracotta figurines: bearded worshippers of various sizes, six figures carrying kids, a figure with snakes and a nude female figure painted red. The excavation report considered the pit most probably a bothros, that is, a pit in which the old offerings of a sanctuary were buried. The sanctuary where they were first dedicated has not been found.⁸

Antiquity

The tombs and the figurines show the close ties of the place with Salamis. According to the French archaeologist Sabine Fourrier, the figurines show that the output of the workshops of Salamis reached as far as the Karpasia.⁹ In the Archaic ancient Greek period the place most probably belonged to the kingdom of Salamis.

Frankish rule

Bustron’s list records Patriki twice, both times together with the neighbouring village of Agios Theodoros. King James II gave it as a fief to Catanio de Negron and his male heirs, and to Gabriel Gentile, who also received villages in other districts.¹⁰ In 1468 Catanio de Negron was bailli of Ammochostos, that is, the royal official who administered the finances of the city.¹¹

Gentile was the physician of James II. According to the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, the king added Palaiometocho and Klavdia to his fief of Agios Theodoros. After James’s death Gentile remained physician to Queen Catherine Cornaro and took part in the government of the kingdom, until he was killed in 1473, in the uprising at Ammochostos.¹²

Turkish rule

Pococke, who passed through the village in 1738, writes that he was hospitably received by the Greek priest.¹³

The land survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33 recorded only those who held property, not all the inhabitants. Patriki is recorded as a mixed village, with 26 property-holding households. They had mainly uncultivated land and cotton fields, a few cereal fields and a vineyard, 33 olive trees and 23 mulberries, and a horse-driven mill. They also owned some 360 sheep and goats, and cows, oxen and horses.¹⁴

Churches and monasteries

The parish church of the village, dedicated to the Archangel Michael, was built in 1911, in the centre of the village. According to the Patriki Community Council, it replaced an older, small church, was consecrated in 1918 and had a carved wooden iconostasis, and on its feast day, 8 November, a fair was held in its courtyard.¹⁵ The village also had a second parish church, of the Panagia.

South of the village, about one and a half kilometres away, stands the chapel of Panagia Trypiti, of the 18th or 19th century. According to the Community Council, there was a pierced stone with a cross there, and those who had made a vow or sought the Virgin’s help passed three times through the hole; the chapel took its name, “the pierced one”, from it. In 1969 a new small church was built next to the stone.¹⁶

The village also had the chapels of Agios Georgios, of the 20th century, of the Prodromos (St John the Baptist) and of Agios Efstathios.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals, olives and carobs, and livestock farming was one of their main occupations.¹⁷ The Patriki Cooperative Grocery Store was founded in 1956 and the Cooperative Credit Society in 1957. According to the Union of Displaced Communities of Ammochostos, after 1970, with the growth of tourism in Ammochostos, many inhabitants travelled daily to work in the town.¹⁸

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, citing the Cypriot historian Ieronymos Peristianis, already before 1850 Greek letters were taught in the village by the chanter Achilleas Chatzinikoli from Pano Panagia, a graduate of the Greek School of Larnaka. From 1850 to 1878 the local priest Papaloizos Serafeim taught there, and in 1879 Georgios Nikolaidis, who had 16 to 25 pupils.¹⁹ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school had 57 pupils and two teachers.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Patriki had 354 inhabitants in 1881, 393 in 1891, 389 in 1901, 544 in 1911 and 586 in 1921.²⁰ In 1931 it had 609 inhabitants, all Christians, and in 1946 832, of whom 824 were Orthodox, 5 Muslims and 3 of another religion (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 581 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 512 Greeks.

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 466 inhabitants signed, practically all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 131 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Patriki was occupied by the Turkish army. According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, most of the inhabitants fled before the advancing Turkish army.²¹ Those who stayed in the village found themselves in confinement, enclaved. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, they numbered 98 in October 1975, and by the end of 1976 all had been expelled.²² In this way the Greek population of the village was ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

Three deaths are recorded in the village, all of them civilians of Patriki who died while living enclaved.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of the Archangel Michael into a mosque. According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, when a new mosque was built in the village around 2010, the church was abandoned. In 2022 its crosses had been removed, the bell tower no longer had a bell, and inside, in poor condition, the large carved wooden iconostasis still survived.²³