Pyrogi is a mainly Greek community in the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 15 kilometres south-east of Lefkosia, at an elevation of 160 metres, on the bank of the Gialias river. Its church, of Agios Antypas, is one of the smallest in Cyprus.¹ In the 1960 census it had 466 inhabitants, of whom 374 were Greeks and 86 Turks.

Name

The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) writes the name “Πυρόγι” (Pyrogi). The word is also a common place-name: the same index records places called “Πυρόγι” and “Πυρόγια” in many parts of the island, from the Karpasia to Pafos.² In the mapping of Cyprus by the British officer Herbert Kitchener, in the first years of British rule, the village is written “Pyroi”.³ The inhabitants called it Pyroi: it is written thus, “Πυρόϊ”, in the Enosis plebiscite of 1950 and in the register of the village’s co-operative society.

Founding and first records

Pyrogi was not found in the lists of fiefs of the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florios Voustronios nor in the Venetian memorandum of the late 15th century published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie. The village did, however, already exist at that time: the British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus at the beginning of the 20th century, writes that near Pyrogi there was a Franciscan monastery in the 16th century.⁴

In 1750 the British consul at Aleppo Alexander Drummond, who travelled in Cyprus, calls the Gialias the “river Piroi”, after the name of the village that stood on its bank.⁵ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the original settlement most probably lay a little outside the present village, at the locality Agios Georgios, which the Gazetteer records on the village’s land.⁶

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Pyrogi is a mixed village of Christians and Muslims, with 17 property-holding households. Their estates were almost all fields, with a few orchards and 149 olive trees. Their animals were 545 sheep and goats and 14 oxen, and accounted for about a quarter of the value of the village’s property: stock-breeding already had a large place in the life of the inhabitants.⁷

British rule

At the beginning of the 20th century Jeffery describes Pyrogi as a small old village on the main road. The road crossed the Gialias by an old bridge, which by 1918 had fallen into ruin; an iron structure had been put up in its place.⁸ In 1938 the village’s Co-operative Credit Society was founded.

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village, in the western part of its old centre, is dedicated to Saint Antypas, that is, according to Jeffery, most probably to Saint Antipas, the martyr of Pergamon. It dates from the 12th to the 14th century and is an Ancient Monument, in Schedule B of the List of Ancient Monuments. Jeffery describes it as a miniature of a Greek medieval church: it has a central aisle and two side aisles, and a small dome, but its central aisle is only about two metres wide. Around the church lay the village cemetery.⁹

The Franciscan monastery that existed near Pyrogi in the 16th century has left no trace. Jeffery supposes that it lay in the valley of the Gialias, towards Potamia, and that one of the small country chapels there may preserve the memory of its site.¹⁰

Pyrogi also had the chapels of Agios Antonios and of Saint John the Baptist (Agios Ioannis o Prodromos).

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals and fodder crops, without irrigation, and stock-breeding was fairly well developed, as already in the survey of 1832/33.¹¹

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Pyrogi had 73 pupils and three teachers.

Population

Pyrogi grew steadily in the 20th century. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 198 inhabitants in 1881, 185 in 1891, 100 in 1901, 151 in 1911 and 177 in 1921.¹² In 1931 the village, together with a chiftlik that was enumerated with it, had 219 inhabitants, 160 Christians and 59 Muslims, and in 1946 296, of whom 207 were Orthodox, 78 Muslims and 11 others (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 466 inhabitants, 374 Greeks, 86 Turks and six others, and in 1973 541 Greeks.

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 124 inhabitants of Pyrogi signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 14 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Pyrogi 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.

Four inhabitants of Pyrogi, three soldiers and one civilian, were recorded as missing. The soldiers were lost in the area of Mia Milia (two) and at Voni, and the civilian in the village itself. The remains of the soldier lost at Voni were located and identified; the other three are still missing. On the land of Pyrogi three dead of 1974 are recorded: two soldiers and one civilian.

The village lies today inside a prohibited Turkish military zone, and the church of Agios Antypas and the cemetery cannot be visited or recorded.¹³