Prastio, also known as Prastio Mesaorias, is a Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos (Famagusta). It lies 18 kilometres west of Ammochostos, at an altitude of 20 metres, on the plain of the Mesaoria, beside the Nicosia–Ammochostos road. In the first half of the 20th century it had a station of the Cyprus railway.¹ At the 1960 census it had 977 inhabitants, of whom 976 were Greeks.

Name

In the survey of Cyprus made by the British officer Herbert Kitchener in the first years of British rule it is recorded as “Prastion tis Sigouris”, that is, Prastio of Sigouri, after neighbouring Sigouri (Sivori), the seat of the medieval administrative district to which it belonged.² In the 1950 plebiscite it is written “Prasteio Mesaorias”.

Founding and first records

The 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie notes that the “Prastrove” of a bull of Pope Celestine III of 1196, among the areas of the Mesaoria whose tithe belonged to the Latin archbishop of Nicosia, may be Prastio of Sigouri.³

At the end of the 15th century, shortly after Cyprus passed to the Venetians, Prastio was a royal village, that is, it belonged directly to the state and not to a feudal lord. In a Venetian statistical memorandum published by Mas Latrie, “Casal Prastio” is recorded in the bailiwick, the administrative district, of Sigouri, together with neighbouring Gaidouras and four other villages.⁴

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Prastio is a mixed village, with 94 property-holding households, one of the highest numbers in the Mesaoria, and a church. Their fields were mostly cotton and grain fields. They had some 3,500 sheep and goats, oxen for ploughing, cows, mules and beehives, a mill turned by a horse, and two grocer’s shops. Two estates (chiftliks) belonging to foreign consuls are also recorded on the village land.⁵

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in the 18th and 19th centuries Prastio had a large dependency (metochi) of the monastery of Panagia tou Machaira, which held 255 skales of land in the village in 1773 and 337 skales in 1843.⁶

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village, dedicated to Saint George, stands in the centre of the old settlement and was built in the 1870s; its bell tower and apse are in the Gothic style. It is an Ancient Monument.⁷ In the early 20th century the British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus, noted that the village had two large modern churches.⁸ On the land of Prastio there were also the chapels of Agios Georgios and Agios Andronikos.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 cereal growing dominated at Prastio, and the inhabitants also raised livestock. Archbishop Kyrillos III of Cyprus (1916–1933) came from the village.⁹ According to the 2019 government publication on the displaced municipalities and communities, the poet Glafkos Alithersis also came from Prastio, and in the 20th century athletes of the village won Cyprus-wide successes.¹⁰ The New Cooperative Credit Society of Prasteio Ammochostou was founded in 1948 and the Prasteio Cooperative Grocery in 1953.

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in the 19th century children learned “common letters” at the Machairas metochi for a small fee. Kyrillos III, who was born in 1859, learned his first letters in the village from the lay teacher Chatzinikolas, in a school the community had built in the churchyard.¹¹ According to the 2019 publication, the primary school operated in its own building from 1922.¹² In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of Prastio had 114 pupils and four teachers.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Prastio had 581 inhabitants in 1881, 704 in 1891, 723 in 1901, 847 in 1911 and 817 in 1921.¹³ In 1931, together with the railway station, it had 880 inhabitants, 878 Christians and two Muslims, and in 1946 985, of whom 983 were Orthodox and two Muslims (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 977 inhabitants, 976 Greeks and one Briton, and in 1973 991 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 612 inhabitants of Prastio signed, practically all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters records 14 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or assisted the Struggle. The EOKA fighter Michail Koukkis came from Prastio.¹⁴ According to the biography published by the EOKA Liberation Struggle Foundation, the fighter Christos Samaras of Liopetri was also active at Prastio.¹⁵

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Prastio was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

The 1976 Report of the European Commission of Human Rights records, from the notes of a doctor who gave evidence to the Commission and wrote down what patients, victims or eyewitnesses, told him, that on 16 August 1974, one day after the ceasefire, Turkish soldiers executed eight civilians whom they had taken prisoner in the area of Prastio.¹⁶

Three inhabitants of Prastio, all civilians, were recorded as missing. All three disappeared in the village itself. The remains of two have been located and identified, while one is still missing.

According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, the occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Agios Georgios into a mosque; all the crosses were removed and the south entrance was walled up so that a mihrab could be set into it from the inside. When a new mosque was built in the village, around the early 2000s, the church was abandoned. Not a single grave cross remains in the cemetery.¹⁷ The 2009 list records the chapel of Agios Georgios as demolished and that of Agios Andronikos as ruined; according to the 2019 publication, both were lost as a result of the occupation.¹⁸