Peristeronari is a small, mixed community in the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 14 kilometres south-west of Morfou, at an elevation of 80 metres, near Kalo Chorio Lefkas. The Setrachos and Lefkatis rivers pass through its land.¹ In the 1960 census it had 199 inhabitants, of whom 138 were Greeks and 61 Turks.

Name

In the 15th-century list of fiefs the village is written “Peristeronari”. The Greek philologist Athanasios Sakellarios wrote it in 1890 as “Περεστερώνα” (Peresterona).² The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) records it as “Περιστερωνάρι, τό” (Peristeronari).³

Founding and first records

Peristeronari appears for the first time in a written source in the 1460s, in the list of the fiefs distributed by King James II. It is preserved by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florios Voustronios, who also mentions the village in his description of the rivers of Cyprus.⁴

Antiquity

Sakellarios wrote that south of Lefka there were ruins of an ancient city, which stretched as far as Kalo Chorio and Peristeronari. He considered them most probably the ruins of Aipeia, the city that according to Plutarch stood high up, above Soloi: according to tradition, King Philokypros moved its inhabitants to the plain below, that is, to the site of Soloi.⁵ This identification has not been confirmed. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, no systematic excavations were ever carried out at Peristeronari.⁶ The area, near Soloi, most probably belonged to the ancient kingdom of Soloi.

Frankish and Venetian rule

In the 1460s King James II gave Peristeronari as a fief to Manoli Zebe, with the note “libero”. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, this note meant that the fief was granted free of tax. The same man also received from the king the village “Assomato de Ghilani”.⁷

Voustronios, who wrote in the years of Venetian rule, counts Peristeronari among the villages watered by the river he calls “Caris”, that is, the Karkotis. The river rises in Troodos and runs down northwards through the valley of Solea; Voustronios lists its villages from Kakopetria, Evrychou and Linou down to Petra, Elia and Melanissa, and last of all Peristeronari.⁸

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Peristeronari is recorded as a Muslim village, with eight property-holding households. They had mainly wheat fields and a few cotton fields, 241 olive trees, 17 mulberry trees, two olive presses and a few oxen for ploughing.⁹

Churches and monasteries

The church of the village was dedicated to Saint Demetrios; the Gazetteer marks it within the settlement, with the place-name of the same name around it. The 2009 list of occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus also records the church of the Prophet Elijah (Profitis Ilias); on the village’s land the Gazetteer marks two places with the name Agios Ilias.¹⁰

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew citrus, oranges and citrons, cereals and fodder crops. Many worked in the mines of the area and their installations. Next to the village ran the railway line that carried the ore from the Skouriotissa mine to the installations at Xeros and Karavostasi.¹¹

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 49 inhabitants in 1881, 45 in 1891, 57 in 1901, 64 in 1911 and 67 in 1921.¹² In 1931 Peristeronari had 111 inhabitants, 46 Christians and 65 Muslims, and in 1946 73, of whom 23 were Orthodox and 50 Muslims (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 199 inhabitants, 138 Greeks and 61 Turks, and in 1973 183 Greeks and around 20 Turks (estimate).

National struggles

The Register of EOKA Fighters lists one Greek inhabitant of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Peristeronari was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek population suffered ethnic cleansing. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

On the land of Peristeronari two dead of 1974 are recorded, both soldiers, who fell in the village and in the Peristeronari–Lefka area.

According to the 2009 list of occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus, the Turkish army demolished both churches of the village, Agios Dimitrios and the Prophet Elijah.