Sichari is a Greek community of the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 9 kilometres south-east of Keryneia, at an altitude of 310 metres, on the southern slopes of the Pentadaktylos, about one kilometre from neighbouring Vouno. On its land, north-east of the village, stands the medieval Greek monastery of Panagia Apsinthiotissa. In the 1960 census it had 356 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

The origin of the name is not known. The name is spelled in various ways: on Kitchener’s British map of Cyprus and in the 1931 census “Sykhari”, in the 1950 Enosis plebiscite «Συγχαρί».

Founding and first records

When the village was founded is not known. The oldest written mention of it found dates from the 18th century: the British architect of the Department of Antiquities George Jeffery considers it to be the “Sicorudi” mentioned by the Italian traveller Giovanni Mariti in 1769.¹ On the village’s land are the place names “Pano Palion” and “Kato Palion”.²

Archaeological sites

In 1963 and in December 1964, during the consolidation works at the monastery of Panagia Apsinthiotissa, the Cypriot archaeologist Athanasios Papageorgiou made trial trenches for the Department of Antiquities to locate the refectory, that is the hall where the monks ate, and the west wing. The refectory had painted decoration, of which fragments were found, and had later been converted into cells; inside it part of a Turkish-type bath with a hypocaust, that is with heating under the floor, was also uncovered. Also uncovered were the foundations of most of the cells of the west wing and a row of half-underground rooms of the late 11th or early 12th century, and in the church fragments of wall paintings of very fine art. The restoration of the church was completed in 1965.³

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

The oldest dated buildings on the land of Sichari are medieval Greek. The church of the monastery of Panagia Apsinthiotissa was built at the end of the 11th century and the refectory at the beginning of the 12th. The chapel of Agios Nikolaos, now in ruins, also dates from the 12th century.

Frankish rule

The monastery appears in a written source a few decades after the Franks took Cyprus. In 1223, when the Latin archbishop was demanding that the Greek bishops and priests submit to the Latin bishops, the Greek clergy of the island sent the bishop of Soloi and the abbot of the monastery “of the Apsinthia” to Nicaea, to the Ecumenical Patriarch Germanos II, to ask his advice. This is related by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie.⁴ The chapel of Panagia Petomenitissa dates from the 13th century.

Turkish rule

In the land survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, four households with property are recorded at Sichari, all Christian. They had wheat fields and a threshing floor, 24 olive trees and two mulberry trees, a sheepfold, 19 beehives and 384 goats, two cows and a pair of oxen.⁵

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox church of the village is dedicated to Saint Mamas and dates from the 19th century. Jeffery, in 1918, notes it as recently rebuilt.⁶

North-east of the village, on a slope of the Pentadaktylos, stands the monastery of Panagia Apsinthiotissa, property of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. It is an Ancient Monument. Its large church has a central space of hexagonal plan, which was covered by a large dome, three apses to the east and a narthex with semicircular ends to the north and south. Of the complex, the two-storey buildings of the north side survived in ruins.⁷ Beside the monastery are the ruins of the cemetery church of Agios Savvas, which is also an Ancient Monument.

On the village’s land there were also the ruined chapels of Agios Nikolaos and Panagia Petomenitissa.⁸

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals and carob trees and raised sheep and goats.⁹ According to the Union of Communities of Keryneia District, after 1952 the men increasingly went to work as labourers and craftsmen in Nicosia, while the women worked at weaving and until 1960 were “the weavers of Nicosia”.¹⁰ In 1950 the Sichari–Vouno Co-operative Credit Society was founded, and in 1956 the Co-operative Grocery of the two villages.

Population

The population of Sichari grew steadily. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 125 inhabitants in 1881, 134 in 1891, 172 in 1901, 192 in 1911 and 203 in 1921.¹¹ In 1931 it had 212 inhabitants, all Christians, and in 1946 330, all Orthodox (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 356 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 381 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school had 55 pupils and two teachers.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 172 inhabitants of Sichari signed.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

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

Ten dead of 1974 are recorded on the village’s land, all of them soldiers. Two inhabitants of Sichari were recorded as missing, and the remains of neither have been located to this day: one civilian, who was lost in the village itself, and one soldier, who was lost in the Koutsoventis–Vouno area.

The 2009 list records the church of Agios Mamas as desecrated, looted and in ruins; its roof has collapsed and its interior was used as a storeroom. In the village cemetery the crosses of the graves are scattered, so that the graves can hardly be identified.¹²

The monastery of Panagia Apsinthiotissa was desecrated and looted, part of it collapsed and part of it is used as a stable. The wall paintings of the church were destroyed. Two 12th-century wall-painting fragments from the monastery turned up in the illegal antiquities trade; they were bought by a Canadian collector, who returned them, and they were exhibited at the House of Lords in London in December 2014.¹³