Stylloi is a Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos (Famagusta). It lies 11 kilometres north-west of Ammochostos, at an altitude of 10 metres, on the plain of the eastern Mesaoria, between the rivers Pediaios and Gialias, a few kilometres west of ancient Salamis.¹ At the 1960 census it had 538 inhabitants, all Greeks.

Name

In the official Gazetteer of Cyprus the village is written “Stylloi, oi”.² The 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas already mentions it by the same name, and in the survey of Cyprus made by the British officer Herbert Kitchener in the first years of British rule it is written “Stylos”.³

Archaeological sites

About one and a half kilometres east of the village, on the road to Egkomi, lies an ancient cemetery. In 1928 the Briton Rupert Gunnis excavated part of it for the Cyprus Museum, without publishing the results. In the autumn of 1930 the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, led by the Swedish archaeologist Erik Sjöqvist, excavated 17 rock-cut chamber tombs with a dromos, that is, an entrance passage. The tombs had been reused, and contained burials, pottery of many kinds, clay spindle-whorls and a bronze ring. According to the Swedish archaeologist Einar Gjerstad, the cemetery came into use at the end of the Geometric and the beginning of the Archaic ancient Greek period, and later the tombs were reused and new ones were cut. The finds are now in the Museum of Mediterranean Antiquities in Stockholm.⁴

Antiquity

The place lay a few kilometres from ancient Salamis and belonged to its ancient Greek kingdom. The cemetery east of the village shows that a community lived there already in the Geometric and Archaic ancient Greek periods.

Frankish rule, Venetian rule

In August 1425, when the Mamluks of Egypt raided Cyprus, King Janus sent his brother, the Prince of Galilee, against them. According to Machairas, at Stylloi the prince’s men found twenty Saracens on a hill, eight on horseback and twelve on foot; they killed six of the foot soldiers and took one alive, while the rest escaped.⁵

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Stylloi is a mixed village, with 41 property-holding households and a church. Most of their fields were cotton and grain fields, and they also had a vineyard, fields of madder, the plant of the red dye, a mulberry garden with a well, threshing floors and large barren tracts. No trees are recorded. They had more than 1,100 sheep, 40 oxen for ploughing, cows, horses and 56 beehives. On the village land there was also an estate (chiftlik) belonging to a relative of a foreign consul.⁶

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village is dedicated to the Prophet Elijah; it stands on the south-western edge of the old settlement and dates from the 20th century.⁷ The village also has the chapel of Agios Efstathios.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew unirrigated cereals and fodder crops and kept many sheep. The Ammochostos–Nicosia line of the Cyprus railway passed near the village, with a station at Stylloi.⁸ According to the 2019 government publication on the displaced municipalities and communities, they grew mainly wheat, barley and cotton, and their houses were built of mud brick, with the traditional arcaded “iliakos” (sun porch).⁹ The New Cooperative Credit Society of Stylloi was founded in 1946 and the Stylloi Cooperative Grocery in 1956.

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of Stylloi had 84 pupils and three teachers.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Stylloi had 216 inhabitants in 1881, 311 in 1891, 383 in 1901, 399 in 1911 and 486 in 1921.¹⁰ In 1931 it had 521 inhabitants, 479 Christians and 42 Muslims, and in 1946 613, of whom 589 were Orthodox and 24 Muslims (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 538 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 572 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 330 inhabitants of Stylloi signed, practically all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters records 10 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or assisted the Struggle. The EOKA fighters Panagiotis Chrysostomou and Theodosis Chatzitheodosiou came from Stylloi.¹¹

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Stylloi 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.

Seven inhabitants of Stylloi, four civilians and three soldiers, were recorded as missing. Three disappeared in the village itself and the other four elsewhere: in the area of Aspri Moutti and Sychari, in the area of Dikomo and Agyrta, at Trachonas and in the area of Gaidouras. The remains of four have been located and identified, while three are still missing.

According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, both cemeteries of the village are in ruins; the grave crosses have been torn from their bases and almost all of them moved to a small structure. Restoration work was carried out on the church of Profitis Ilias in 2023, but the paint inside is already peeling.¹²