HISTORY OF NICOSIA

It is very likely that Paleolithic Man arrived in Cyprus a few hundred thousand years ago, but up to the present no definite sites have been located. About eight thousand years ago the Neolithic people came to the island probably from an area between sout h eastern Turkey and Syria. They led a settled life and were the first to build villages in this island. A few thousand years later, some Bronze age folk had a small settlement on the banks of the Pedhios River near Nicosia, but of course the only records are in the form of pottery and artifacts. About 800 B.C. mention is made of a town called Ledra in central Cyprus, although there is no archaeological evidence. Towns were established on the coast, but inland, the sites were on river banks at good crossi ng points. The river which flows through Nicosia is not a perennial one and it is better described as a wadi. There are no rivers in Cyprus which flow all the year round.

Nicosia lies in the geographical centre of a vast plain called the Mesaoria, meaning between the mountains, i.e. Kyrenia and Troodos mountains. We see this plain today as an almost treeless prairie and it is very difficult to believe that as late as the fifteenth century, it was well forested. Records of the 1340 period describe the great sport of hunting done by the kings and nobles who lived in their Nicosia palaces. What did they hunt? Probably deer, wild goats and the mouflon.

By the 16th century, most of the wild animals were hunted to near extinction, but the mouflon escaped by retreating to the Troodos mountains. The forests were now cleared for agriculture, chiefly for the growing of grain. In classical times Cyprus expor ted wheat to Greece. lt is well known that forests attract rainfall, and so with their disappearance, the Mesaoria became a semi-desert, but along with this interference by Man there has been a change of climate.

Descriptions of Nicosia by a traveler. reveal that the city was a great religious centre, the seat of an archbishopric, had a strongly built castle, many palaces, and, most surprising of all, the walls had a circuit of seven miles. It must have really been a very large village, very spread out because of the large gardens that everybody had in many parts of old Nicosia today, there are houses with unusually large gardens, when one considers the narrow streets, and so we have here a relic of the Midle Ages. All the mediaeval houses were pulled down and the only ancient monuments of those times are the Selimiye mosque, (St. Sophia), the Bedestan and the Hadiar Pasha mosque. (St. Katherines). Buildings come and go, but gardens go on forever.

In I565, military engineers from Venice began preparations for the defense of he town by artillery, for at this time the old castles of the Lusignian period were of no use against cannon. The city was reduced in size, for the new walls with their eleven bastions were given a three mile circuit. All the nld castles and intervening spaces were demolished to provide a free field of fire for the artillery on the ramparts. These walls form the largest ancient monument in Nicosia. This was the end of the long period of the Middle Ages known to historians as the Lusignian regime.

When the Turkish soldiers arrived at the walls of Nicosia in 157I, they found that instead of bashing at the gates, they could obtain entrance to the city by capturing a bastion. These enormous bastions proved to be points of weakness in the defenses. The Turks converted the churches into mosques, built khans and generally abolishe d the feudal system by introducing a new method of taxation. Collection of taxes was "tarmed out" to the highest bidder, and later, this led to much trouble.

Earthquakes seem to have occurred several times, every few hundred years, and a severe shock in 1741 caused one of the minarets of St. Sophia to tumble down. Many buildings of the Lusignian period still show the scars of the shocks, for we can see huge cracks and windows and doors out of alignment. The Bedestan is a good example.

The history of Nicosia in the last two hundred years can be obtained from Turkish archives plus chats with residents who live in houses, occupied by the same family for generations. The house of Dr. Rassim at no. 5 Kamil Pasha street has been with the fam ily for seventy years and Mrs. Rassim related to the writer much historical detail about her home. It is a large house with a large garden with a very high wall and containing its own well, a legacy of the Middle Ages, perhaps going back five hundred years. In 1878 the house became the first archdeacon's house when Cyprus came under British administration. One large room became a kindergarten and another, with a fine carved ceiling became a chapel. This beautiful wooden ceiling is probably several hundred years old and her description of events within the family is a microcosm of the history of Nicosia for the last century. Mrs. Rassim gave a vivid story of the days of intercommunal strife when the Eoka gunmen fired from the roof tops of the Ledra Palace on to the Rocca bastion nearby. Those days are gone for ever.

The sketches show some rough sequence in Nicosia's chequered history. Fig. 27 is the Chapter House, the oldest domestic building in Nicosia, and probably dates from the Lusignian period, i.e. 14th century. Fig. 28 is a Venetian house between the Sultan's library and the Bedestan, and the high window on the left with its columnar mullions, resembles the domestic architecture of l6th century Florence in Italy. The main entrance to the Büyük Khan is shown in fig. 29 and this dates from about I600 A.D. When t he Turks arrived in I57I quite a number of inns or khans were built. Houses with large gardens were selected because it provided the space for the inner courtyard. Like the old inns in England, there was always an inner yard to provide accommodation for horses and donkeys.

So far, little has been said about the social history of Nicosia and this will be dealt with in the next chapter. In a tour of Nicosia, the visitor is bound to see the old churches of the Middle Ages and the Venetian walls and bastions, but rarely do tourists ever peep into the gardens of some houses in the old quarters, which seem to bristle with antiques, old wells, Roman columns, carved wooden doors etc. They form deIightful subjects for the wandering artist and at the same time are really the relics of ancient Nicosia, more than six hundred years ago the medieval garden city.