Petra tou Digeni is a Turkish community in the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 18 kilometres north-east of Lefkosia, at an elevation of 130 metres, in the Mesaoria plain, south of the Pentadaktylos. In the 1960 census it had 263 inhabitants, all of them Turks.

Name

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village took its name, “the Rock of Digenis”, from a large rock in its area. According to a legend very common in Cyprus, this rock had been thrown from the Pentadaktylos against the Saracens by Digenis Akritas, that is, the hero of the Akritic songs.¹

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Petra tou Digeni is recorded as a Muslim village with six property-owning households. The owners had mainly fields and threshing floors, a single olive tree, 75 sheep and goats and eight oxen.²

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 cereals, fodder crops and olives were grown on the village’s land, and the inhabitants also kept livestock.³

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 77 inhabitants in 1881, 87 in 1891, 133 in 1901, 146 in 1911 and 139 in 1921.⁴ In 1931 Petra tou Digeni had 183 inhabitants, 2 Christians and 181 Muslims, and in 1946 236, all of them Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded religion only). In 1960 it had 263 inhabitants, all Turks, and in 1973 around 350 (estimate).