Tymvou is a large Greek community of the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 14 kilometres east of Lefkosia, at an altitude of 110 metres, in the plain of the Mesaoria, near the west bank of the Gialias river. On its land, south of the village, lies the underground tomb of the Agioi Saranta (Forty Saints), with the remains of a 5th-century basilica. In the 1960 census it had 1,133 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

In the list of fiefs of the 1460s the village is written “Timbo”, and in one manuscript of the same list “Tambo”. In 20th-century documents the name is often written Tympou, as in the register of co-operative societies and in the results of the 1950 plebiscite, while the official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) has the form Tymvou.¹

Founding and first records

Tymvou first appears in a written source in the 1460s, as “Casal Timbo”, in the list of the fiefs distributed by King James II. It is preserved by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron.² The site of Agioi Saranta, with its 5th-century basilica, shows that Christians lived in the area much earlier.

Archaeological sites

About three kilometres south of the village, at the site of Agioi Saranta, the Gazetteer also records the place names Ttekkes and Potimata tou Ttekke and an old water mill.³ At this site, around the underground tomb of the Agioi Saranta, mosaic floors and the remains of a three-aisled basilica of the early medieval Greek period were found. They came to light after 1974, in works carried out at the site, without a permit, by the occupation regime.

According to the Cypriot historian of Christian art Andreas Foulias, the basilica had at least two phases, one of the 5th century and one of the first half of the 6th. The mosaics of the first phase have geometric designs, with motifs found all over the Mediterranean; those of the second, in the sanctuary, depict animals, birds and a sea creature. Some of the designs are not known from elsewhere in Cyprus, and it is remarkable that such mosaics were found inland.⁴

Frankish rule

In the 1460s King James II gave Tymvou to Pietro Gullo, or Pierre Goul, of a Genoese family of Cyprus. His wife Andriola received Diorios from the king.⁵ Goul served in the Secrete, the royal financial office in Lefkosia. In an order of 1468, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, James raises his salary “because he is constantly in the service of the Secrete”, and makes him a member of its council.⁶

Turkish rule

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, there was a large chiftlik, that is a farm estate, at Tymvou, which in 1813 Archbishop Kyprianos of Cyprus bought on behalf of the monastery of Panagia of Machairas. The deed of sale, preserved in the codex of the monastery, describes fields of wheat and cotton, fruit trees, 800 goats and sheep and houses for the labourers. In 1821 the Ottomans confiscated the chiftlik together with other properties of the monastery; later they divided it into pieces which they sold to the villagers, and a large part of it was given to the Evkaf, the Muslim religious foundation.⁷

In the land survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Tymvou is a village of mixed population, with 32 households with property. They had wheat and cotton fields, a few trees, mainly olives and some mulberries, more than 800 sheep and goats, 21 oxen and a winter water mill. The chiftlik then belonged to the daughter of a deceased former governor of Cyprus and amounted to more than half the value of all the property of the village.⁸

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village is dedicated to Saint George and was built in 1858. According to the British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus at the beginning of the 20th century, it was built on the foundations of an older church.⁹ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, some of its icons were of the 17th and 18th centuries.¹⁰

At the site of Agioi Saranta there is an underground rock-cut tomb, shaped into a church, with a central aisle ending in an apse and two side aisles with graves. The Greeks venerated it as the tomb of the Forty Saints, whose identity is not known; the site was sacred to the Muslims too, who built a small mosque above it, from which steps lead down to the tomb.¹¹ Jeffery describes the mosque in 1918 as a Muslim foundation perhaps two hundred years old, with about sixteen graves in the underground chamber.¹² The mosque with the tomb is an Ancient Monument, in Schedule B of the List of Ancient Monuments.

Outside the village are the country chapels of Profitis Ilias, of the 18th century, to the south, and of Agia Marina, to the north-east.¹³

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Tymvou had very little rain, and before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals and fodder crops without irrigation. Stock-breeding was highly developed: in 1973 the village had more than 3,000 sheep and goats, almost 150 cows and many poultry.¹⁴ In 1927 the Tympou Co-operative Credit Society was founded.

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in 1865 the teacher Michail Ch. Tymvios asked the archbishop by letter for a school to be founded in his village, where until then there had been none; a school was operating shortly before 1878.¹⁵ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Tymvou had 170 pupils and six teachers.

Population

Tymvou grew steadily in the 20th century. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 278 inhabitants in 1881, 336 in 1891, 436 in 1901, 550 in 1911 and 691 in 1921.¹⁶ In 1931 it had 822 inhabitants, 810 Christians and 12 Muslims, and in 1946 1,009, of whom 987 were Orthodox and 22 Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 1,133 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 1,288 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 519 inhabitants of Tymvou signed. In the EOKA struggle a group was organised at Tymvou by fighters from neighbouring Athienou.¹⁷ The Register of EOKA Fighters records 53 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Tymvou 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.

Eleven inhabitants of Tymvou, four civilians and seven soldiers, were recorded as missing; the four were lost in the village and on its land and the seven elsewhere (Keryneia, Mia Milia, Lapithos, Kyra, Aspri Moutti). The remains of three have been located and identified; the other eight are still missing. Three inhabitants of Tymvou were killed elsewhere, one civilian and two soldiers, at Pachyammos in Keryneia, in the Lefkosia area and at an unknown place. On the land of Tymvou two civilians were killed, in the area of the village and in the area of Tymvou airfield.