1.
Cyprus
–
Cyprus, officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the Eastern Mediterranean and the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean. It is located south of Turkey, west of Syria and Lebanon, northwest of Israel and Palestine, north of Egypt, the earliest known human activity on the island dates to around the 10th millennium BC. Archaeological remains from this include the well-preserved Neolithic village of Khirokitia. Cyprus was settled by Mycenaean Greeks in two waves in the 2nd millennium BC, Cyprus was placed under British administration based on Cyprus Convention in 1878 and formally annexed by Britain in 1914. While Turkish Cypriots made up 18% of the population, the partition of Cyprus and creation of a Turkish state in the north became a policy of Turkish Cypriot leaders, following nationalist violence in the 1950s, Cyprus was granted independence in 1960. On 15 July 1974, a coup détat was staged by Greek Cypriot nationalists and elements of the Greek military junta in an attempt at enosis and these events and the resulting political situation are matters of a continuing dispute. The Cyprus Republic has de jure sovereignty over the island of Cyprus, as well as its territorial sea and exclusive economic area, another nearly 4% of the islands area is covered by the UN buffer zone. The international community considers the part of the island as territory of the Republic of Cyprus occupied by Turkish forces. The occupation is viewed as illegal under law, amounting to illegal occupation of EU territory since Cyprus became a member of the European Union. Cyprus is a major tourist destination in the Mediterranean, on 1 January 2008, the Republic of Cyprus joined the eurozone. The earliest attested reference to Cyprus is the 15th century BC Mycenaean Greek
2.
Religious persecution
–
Religious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs or affiliations or lack thereof. The tendency of societies or groups within society to alienate or repress different subcultures is a recurrent theme in human history, Religious persecution may be triggered by religious bigotry or by the state when it views a particular religious group as a threat to its interests or security. At a societal level, this dehumanisation of a religious group may readily turn into violence or other forms of persecution. Indeed, in countries, religious persecution has resulted in so much violence that it is considered a human rights problem. Religious persecution can be considered the opposite of freedom of religion, Religious persecution may also affect atheists in that they may be denounced as being amoral or be persecuted by the religious on the grounds that they are godless. Persecution in this case may refer to confiscation or destruction of property, incitement to hate, arrest, imprisonment, beatings, torture, denial of civil rights on the basis of religion is most often described as religious discrimination, rather than religious persecution. The difference between religious and ethnic identity might sometimes be obscure, cases of genocide in the 20th century cannot be explained in full by citing religious differences, the Holocaust made no distinction between secular Jews, atheistic Jews, orthodox Jews and Jews that had converted to Christianity. The descriptive use of the religious persecution is rather difficult. Religious persecution has taken place at least since the antiquity, and has happened in different historical, geographical and social contexts, until the 18th century, some groups were nearly universally persecuted for their views about religion, such as atheists, Jews and zoroastrians. One period of persecution which has been studied extensively is early modern England, since the rejection of religious persecution, now common in the Western world. The most ambitious chronicle of that time is W. K. Jordans magnum opus The Development of Religious Toleration in England, jordan wrote as the threat of fascism rose in Europe, and this work is seen as a defense of the fragile values of humanism and tolerance. More recent introductions to this period are Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–1689 by John Coffey, tolerance and intolerance in England, 1500-1700 by Alexandra Walsham. To understand why religious persecution has occurred, historians like Coffey pay close attention to what the persecutors said they were doing, no religion is free from internal dissent, although the degree of dissent that is tolerated within a particular religious organization can strongly vary. This degree of diversity tolerated within a church is described as ecclesiastical tolerance. However, when people speak of religious tolerance, they most often mean civil tolerance. Before that, theologians like Joseph Hall had reasoned from the intolerance of the early Christian church in the New Testament to the civil intolerance of the Christian state. Before a vigorous debate about religious persecution took place in England, for centuries in Europe, in England there had been several Acts of Uniformity, in continental Europe the Latin phrase cuius regio, eius religio had been used. Concerning the church, he went on, A church, then, I take to be a society of men
3.
Ottoman Cyprus
–
The Eyalet of Cyprus was an eyalet of the Ottoman Empire made up of the island of Cyprus, which was annexed into the Empire in 1571. The Ottomans changed the way they administered Cyprus multiple times and it was a sanjak of the Eyalet of the Archipelago from 1670 to 1703, and again from 1784 onwards, a fief of the Grand Vizier, and again an eyalet for the short period from 1745 to 1748. During Venetian rule, the Ottomans at times raided Cyprus, in 1489, the first year of Venetian control, Turks attacked the Karpass Peninsula, pillaging and taking captives to be sold into slavery. In 1539 the Turkish fleet attacked and destroyed Limassol, fearing the ever-expanding Ottoman Empire, the Venetians had fortified Famagusta, Nicosia, and Kyrenia, but most other cities were easy prey. In the summer of 1570, the Turks struck again, about 60,000 troops, including cavalry and artillery, under the command of Lala Mustafa Pasha landed unopposed near Limassol on July 2,1570, and laid siege to Nicosia. The city fell on September 9,1570,20,000 Nicosians were put to death, and every church, public building, only women and boys who were captured to be sold as slaves were spared. Word of the spread, and a few days later Mustafa took Kyrenia without having to fire a shot. Famagusta, however, resisted with the Siege of Famagusta and put up a defense that lasted from September 1570 until August 1571, the fall of Famagusta marked the beginning of the Ottoman period in Cyprus. The victory over the Turks, however, came too late to help Cyprus, in 1570, the Turks first occupied Cyprus, and Lala Mustafa Pasha became the first Turkish Governor of Cyprus, challenging the claims of Venice. Simultaneously, the Pope formed a coalition between the Papal States, Malta, Spain, Venice and several other Italian states, with no real result, in 1573 the Venetians left, removing the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. As soon as Nicosia was conquered, Cyprus was declared an eyalet under the administration of a beylerbey, and Mustafa Pasha, Cyprus was divided into three sanjaks, Famagusta, Kyrenia and Paphos. Additionally, the sanjaks of Alâiye, Tarsus, İçel, Sis, Zülkadriye, Cyprus was also divided into several kazas, Tuzla, Limassol, Episkopi, Kythrea, Paphos, Kukla, Lefka, Morphou, Hirsofu, Famagusta, Kyrenia and Mesariye. These kazas each had their own kadı or naib, the sanjak of Tripoli, however, was removed from the jurisdiction of Cyprus in 1573 due to its distance and given to the Damascus Eyalet. The sanjaks of İçel, Alâiye and Tarsus were also removed in 1610, however, after the conquest of Crete, the Cypriot Orthodox Church argued that Cyprus had lost importance, that trade volume had decreased and that people were emigrating. It thus requested a change in the status as Cyprus could not afford remaining an eyalet. Thus, in 1670, Cyprus became a sanjak under the Eyalet of the Archipelago, under the control of Kapudan Pasha. This control was exercised through an appointed mütesellim, however, under this system, local aghas were the tax collectors. This magnified their power and resulted in discontent, with the rivalry between them causing a long revolt in the 1680s by Boyacıoğlu Mehmed Agha
4.
Turkish Cypriots
–
Turkish Cypriots or Cypriot Turks are ethnic Turks originating from Cyprus. Following the Ottoman conquest of the island in 1571, about 30,000 Turkish settlers were given once they arrived in Cyprus. Additionally, many of the converted to Islam during the early years of Ottoman rule. Nonetheless, the influx of mainly Muslim settlers to Cyprus continued intermittently until the end of the Ottoman period, today, while Northern Cyprus is home to a significant part of the Turkish Cypriot population, the majority of Turkish Cypriots live abroad, forming the Turkish Cypriot diaspora. The emigration was exacerbated by the violence in the 1950s and 1960s. The vernacular of Turkish spoken by Turkish Cypriots is Cypriot Turkish, the vast majority of Turkish Cypriots are Sunni Muslims. Some of these captives accepted or were forced to covert to Christianity and were baptized, by 1425 some of these slaves helped the Mamluke army to gain access to Limassol Castle. Despite the release of some of the captives, after the payment of ransoms, the medieval Cypriot historian Leontios Machairas recalled that the baptized Turks were not permitted to leave Nicosia when the Mamlukes approached the city after the battle of Khirokitia in 1426. According to Professor Charles Fraser Beckingham there must therefore have been some Cypriots, at least nominally Christian, by 1488 the Ottomans made their first attempt at conquering Cyprus when Sultan Bayezid II sent a fleet to conquer Famagusta. However, the attempt failed due to the intervention of a Venetian fleet. Thereafter, the Queen of Cyprus, Caterina Cornaro, was forced to relinquish her crown to the Republic of Venice in 1489, in the same year Ottoman ships were seen off the coast of Karpas and the Venetians began to strengthen the fortifications of the island. Nonetheless, by 1500 coastal raids by Ottoman vessels resulted in the loss of Venetian fleets forcing Venice to negotiate a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire in 1503. However, by May 1539 Suleiman I decided to attack Limassol because the Venetians had been sheltering pirates who continuously attacked Ottoman ships, Limassol stayed under Ottoman control until a peace treaty was signed in 1540. Nonetheless, Cyprus continued to be a haven for pirates who interrupted the safe passage of Ottoman trade ships and Muslim pilgrims sailing to Mecca and Medina. The basis for the emergence of a sizeable and enduring Turkish community in Cyprus emerged when Ottoman troops landed on the island in mid-May 1570, However, there were also some new converts to Islam on the island during the early years of Ottoman rule. This influx of mainly Muslim settlers to Cyprus continued intermittently until the end of the Ottoman period, by the second quarter of the nineteenth century approximately 30,000 Muslims were living in Cyprus, comprising about 35% of the total population. Throughout the Ottoman rule, the ratio between Christian Greeks and Muslim Turks fluctuated constantly. During 1745-1814, the Muslim Turkish Cypriots constituted the majority on the island against the Christian Greek Cypriots However, by 1841, according to the first British census of Cyprus, in 1881, 95% of the islands Muslims spoke Turkish as their mother tongue
5.
British Cyprus
–
Cyprus was a territory of the Ottoman Empire, lastly as part of the Vilayet of the Archipelago, since it was conquered from the Republic of Venice in 1570-71. Cyprus was then proclaimed a British protectorate and was integrated into the British Empire, king Paul of Greece declared that Cyprus desired union with Greece in 1948. A referendum was presented by the Orthodox Church of Cyprus in 1950, the Greek petition and enosis became an international issue when it was accepted by the United Nations. The Cyprus Emergency was an action that took place in Cyprus from 1955 to 1959. The Cyprus Emergency mainly primarily consisting of a campaign by the Greek Cypriot military group EOKA to remove the British from Cyprus so it could be unified with Greece, signed on 19 February 1959, the London and Zurich Agreements started the process for the constitution of an independent Cyprus. The United Kingdom granted independence of Cyprus via referendum on 16 August 1960, archbishop Makarios III, a charismatic religious and political leader, was elected the first president of independent Cyprus. In 1961 the Republic of Cyprus became the 99th member of the United Nations, media related to British Cyprus at Wikimedia Commons British Rule in Cyprus - cypnet. co. uk
6.
Greek language
–
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
7.
Metaphor
–
A metaphor is a figure of speech that refers, for rhetorical effect, to one thing by mentioning another thing. It may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two ideas, antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy and simile are all types of metaphor. The Philosophy of Rhetoric by rhetorician I. A. Richards describes a metaphor as having two parts, the tenor and the vehicle, the tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the object whose attributes are borrowed, other writers employ the general terms ground and figure to denote the tenor and the vehicle. Cognitive linguistics uses the target and source, respectively. Metaphors are most frequently compared with similes, a simile is a specific type of metaphor that uses the words like or as in comparing two objects, whereas what is commonly referred to as a metaphor states that A is B or substitutes B for A. What is usually referred to as a metaphor asserts the two objects in the comparison are identical on the point of comparison, a simile merely asserts a similarity, for this reason a common-type metaphor is generally considered more forceful than a simile. The metaphor category also contains these types, Allegory, An extended metaphor wherein a story illustrates an important attribute of the subject. Antithesis, A rhetorical contrast of ideas by means of parallel arrangements of words, clauses, or sentences Catachresis, A mixed metaphor used by design and accident. Hyperbole, Excessive exaggeration to illustrate a point Metonymy, A figure of speech using the name of one thing in reference to a different thing of which the first is associated, example, in lands belonging to the crown the word crown is metonymy for ruler or monarch. Parable, An extended metaphor narrated as an anecdote illustrating and teaching such as in Aesops fables, pun, Similar to a metaphor, a pun alludes to another term. However, the difference is that a pun is a frivolous allusion between two different things whereas a metaphor is a purposeful allusion between two different things. Metaphor, like other types of analogy, can usefully be distinguished from metonymy as one of two modes of thought. Thus, a metaphor creates new links between otherwise distinct conceptual domains, whereas a metonymy relies on the links within them. A dead metaphor is one in which the sense of an image has become absent. Examples, to grasp a concept and to gather what youve understood use physical action as a metaphor for understanding, the audience does not need to visualize the action, dead metaphors normally go unnoticed. Some people distinguish between a dead metaphor and a cliché, others use dead metaphor to denote both. A mixed metaphor is one that leaps from one identification to a second identification inconsistent with the first, e. g. Checkmate
8.
Catholic
–
The use of terms catholicism and catholicity is closely related to the use of term Catholic Church. The earliest evidence of the use of term is the Letter to the Smyrnaeans that Ignatius of Antioch wrote in about 108 to Christians in Smyrna. In 380, Emperor Theodosius I limited use of the term Catholic Christian exclusively to those who followed the faith as Pope Damasus I of Rome. Numerous other early writers including Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine of Hippo further developed the use of the term catholic in relation to Christianity. In Christian theology, and specially in ecclesiology, terms Catholicism, when used with small c, terms catholicism and catholicity generally designate theological doctrine of the catholicity of the Church without denominational connotations. A common belief in Catholicism is institutional continuity with the early Christian church founded by Jesus Christ, many churches or communions of churches identify singularly or collectively as the authentic church. The Bishop of Rome was also considered to have the right to convene ecumenical councils, when the Imperial capital moved to Constantinople, Romes influence was sometimes challenged. The first great rupture in the Church followed this Council and they are often called Ancient Oriental Churches. The next major break was after the Council of Chalcedon and this Council repudiated Eutychian Monophysitism which stated that the divine nature completely subsumed the human nature in Christ. This Council declared that Christ, though one person, exhibited two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation and thus is both fully God and fully human, the next great rift within Christianity was in the 11th century. This division between the Western Church and the Eastern Church is called the East–West Schism, several eastern churches reunited, constituting some of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Liturgical and canonical practices vary between all these particular Churches constituting the Roman and Eastern Catholic Churches, in all these cases the beliefs and practices of Catholicism would be identical with the beliefs and practices of the Church in question. However, in Roman Catholicism, the term catholic is understood as to cover those who recognize and are in standing with the Magisterium. The sense given to the word by those who use it to distinguish their position from a Calvinistic or Puritan form of Protestantism. It is then meaningful to attempt to draw up a list of common characteristic beliefs, the Roman Catholic Church includes the 23 rites who recognize the Magisterium. Belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the belief that Christ is made manifest in the elements of Holy Communion, possession of the threefold ordained ministry of Bishops, Priests and Deacons. Belief that the Church is the vessel and deposit of the fullness of the teachings of Jesus and this teaching is preserved in both written scripture and in unwritten tradition, neither being independent of the other. A belief in the necessity and efficacy of sacraments, liturgical and personal use of the Sign of the Cross The use of sacred images, candles, vestments and music, and often incense and water, in worship
9.
Greek Orthodox Church
–
Historically, the term Greek Orthodox has also been used to describe all Eastern Orthodox Churches in general, since Greek in Greek Orthodox can refer to the heritage of the Byzantine Empire. Over time, most parts of the liturgy, traditions, and practices of the church of Constantinople were adopted by all, thus, the Eastern Church came to be called Greek Orthodox in the same way that the Western Church is called Roman Catholic. Orthodox Churches, unlike the Catholic Church, have no Bishopric head, such as a Pope, however, they are each governed by a committee of Bishops, called the Holy Synod, with one central Bishop holding the honorary title of first among equals. Greek Orthodox Churches are united in communion with other, as well as with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Eastern Orthodox hold a doctrine and a common form of worship. The most commonly used Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church was written by Saint John Chrysostom, others, are attributed to St. Basil the Great, St. James, the Brother of God and St. The majority of Greek Orthodox Christians live within Greece and elsewhere in the southern Balkans, but also in Lebanon, Cyprus, Anatolia, European Turkey, and the South Caucasus. In addition, due to the large Greek diaspora, there are many Greek Orthodox Christians who live in North America, Orthodox Christians in Finland, who compose about 1% of the population, are also under the jurisdiction of a Greek Orthodox Church. Thus, they may attend services held in Old Russian and Old Church Slavonic, the Church conducts its liturgy in Koine Greek in the areas of Albania populated by the ethnic Greek minority, alongside the use of Albanian throughout the country. The Greek and Eastern Churches online Constantelos, Demetrios J. Understanding the Greek Orthodox church, its faith, history, the Orthodox Eastern Church Hussey, Joan Mervyn. The orthodox church in the Byzantine empire online Kephala, Euphrosyne, the Church of the Greek People Past and Present Latourette, Kenneth Scott. Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, II, The Nineteenth Century in Europe, The Protestant,2, 479-484, Christianity in a Revolutionary Age, IV, The Twentieth Century in Europe, The Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Churches McGuckin, John Anthony. The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, media related to Greek Orthodox Church at Wikimedia Commons
10.
Taxation in the Ottoman Empire
–
Taxation in the Ottoman Empire changed drastically over time, and was a complex patchwork of different taxes, exemptions, and local customs. As the Ottoman Empire conquered new territories, it adopted and adapted the existing tax systems already used by the previous governments, for instance, at the conquest of Belgrade, the Sultan instructed an official to gather information on the pre-conquest tax system, which would be replicated post-conquest. At the start of each areas tahrir was an outline of the tax laws in that area. This led to a patchwork of different taxes in different parts of the empire. Discriminatory rates tend to lead to production inefficiencies, the defter was a tax register. It recorded names and property/land ownership, it categorised households, and sometimes whole villages, the Ottoman double-entry accounting method, merdiban, was inherited from the Abbasid empire. The primary role of the Timar system was to collect feudal obligations, the Ottoman Empire had a hierarchy of different types of estate, a Hass was larger than a Zaim estate, which in turn was larger than a timar. This system closely resembles the medieval Serb feudal system, which in turn inherited from the Byzantine, as well as regional variation, there were different taxes applied to different religious and ethnic groups, Muslims paid resm-i çift whilst non-Muslims paid İspençe. These taxes might be further graduated according to ability to pay. In 1530, the Eyalet of Rumelia had graduated taxes even between different religious subsets of an ethnic minority, Muslim Romani paid 22 aspers per household. In some cases, local taxes were imposed on nonmuslims specifically to encourage conversion, conversely, measures might be taken at times to prevent conversion. There was a practice of making villages communally responsible for the tax, if one villager fled. There was a special tax, rusum-e eflak, one sheep. Because Vlachs were taxed differently, they were listed differently in defters, there was also a patchwork of tax exemptions called muafiyet, which might be applied to towns, social groups, or even individuals. Waqfs were, in one sense, a form of tax avoidance, however, some were very well-endowed, and provided various local services such as education which compensated for the Ottoman governments inability to provide local services funded by taxation. Some became so powerful that whole towns developed around the social services they provided, a well-endowed vakuf might even take on the role of helping a community pay their annual tax obligations. Taxes were often difficult to collect, especially from rebellious areas, conversely, high taxes could often provoke rebellion. The Ottoman state went bankrupt in 1590, this led to economic collapse, avariz, a centralised cash tax, became the norm rather than an exception
11.
Armenochori, Cyprus
–
Armenochori is an Armenian village located in the Limassol District of Cyprus,10 kilometres northeast of the city of Limassol. Armenochori means “Armenian village” in Greek, in 1958, the Turkish Cypriots adopted the alternative name Esenköy, literally meaning “windy village. ”Armenochori is one of the oldest villages of Limassol District. Early signs of inhabitation is known to be dated to 85BC, part of Tigranes army remained in Cyprus in order to guarantee the security of the Greek population of the island against aggressive Arabians. The area of Armenochori was strategically convenient to watch over the Mediterranean horizon, ancient history says, Armenochori/Esenköy was turned into a Turkish Cypriot village during the Ottoman period. Although some Greek Cypriot and Armenian families lived there between 1891 and 1931, almost all of them left the village by the 1940s, over the course of the British period, the population of the village doubled, rising from 89 persons in 1891 to 162 in 1960. Today the village is the choice of residence of wealthy businessmen from Cyprus, Russia, Armenia and it has a population of 187 people
12.
Arodes
–
Arodes is a village in the North West of Cyprus close to the Akamas peninsula. It is about 23 km from the town of Paphos, Arodes is composed of two smaller settlements, Pano Arodes and Kato Arodes. In 1975, Kato Arodes was abandoned and many of the fell into disrepair. Some houses have now been renovated and made into homes on the provision they be returned to their rightful owners in case of a settlement in the Cyprus dispute. Most residents of Kato Arodes moved to Kapouti to the north of the island, in February 1995, an earthquake occurred that destroyed 50 homes and damaged 570 others. The shock had a moment magnitude of 5.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII, two people were killed and five were injured. The population of Pano Arodes has decreased in the past 30 years as the population has aged, the Christian village contains an eighteenth-century Church of St. Kelandion, an early bishop of Paphos. To the north side of the lies the large stone sarcophagus of St. Agapiticos. The village legend is that those who wish to win the love of a person, be it a girl or boy, come secretly at night and this is powedered and introduced into the loved ones drink, who will immediately reciprocate the donors passion. Conversely, should a person desire to quarrel with another, he carries out the same procedure with powedered stone from the sarcophagus of St. Misiticos. The latter is far more worn away than that of St. Agapiticos, but this is explained by the fact that its powers are much in request by young men and women who wish to change their lovers
13.
Kokkina
–
Kokkina is a coastal exclave of the de facto Northern Cyprus, and a former Turkish Cypriot village and enclave in Cyprus. It is surrounded by territory, with the Morphou Bay on its northern flank. Kokkina sits several kilometres west of the Northern Cyprus mainland and is a place with symbolic significance to Turkish Cypriots, in 1976, all Kokkina inhabitants were transferred to Gialousa and the exclave has since functioned as a Turkish Army military camp. On 4 April 1964, armed groups originating from both communities had fought over a location overlooking the regions only highway. There had also several sporadic incidents of gunfire between villages of the region. On 8 April 1964, the United Nations Force in Cyprus managed to arrange a ceasefire which was enforced by stationing UNFICYP troops at critical points. The defenders consisted of elements of the Turkish Resistance Organization and a number of the mentioned above. A heavy artillery barrage of the beachhead followed causing a number of casualties, the defenders, while completely out-powered and lacking supplies, managed to hold their positions until 8 August when Turkey decided to intervene. Turkish jet fighters bombed military and civilian targets, among the civilian targets, most notable was the bombing of a nearby hospital resulting in many deaths and horrific injuries to a number of civilians. The threat of a Turkish military escalation and a resolution of the United Nations Security Council calling for a ceasefire, the intervention of the Soviet Union prevented any military escalation by warning Turkey that if they invaded Cyprus, the USSR would respond in an appropriate fashion. The President of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, a Greek Cypriot, also issued an ultimatum to Turkey, a ceasefire was declared on 9 August 1964 and UNFICYP forces were once again deployed to the area. Turkey claimed that the attack and threat of further intervention were justified by her right to protect the Turkish Cypriot population under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee. The village was damaged by the artillery barrage and UN forces declared it a disaster area. Since December 1963, thousands of Turkish Cypriots became concentrated in enclaves, Kokkina was one of the last port areas under Turkish Cypriot control and a vital supply link with Turkey for Turkish Cypriot fighters. When the Turkish military staged their operation in Cyprus in 1974, the exclave became part of the Turkish Federative State of North Cyprus in 1975, then the TRNC when it declared UDI in November 1983. However, this declaration of independence was condemned as legally invalid by United Nations Security Council Resolution 541 and has yet to be recognized by any state except Turkey. Today, within the exclave at the cemetery, there are 13 carefully tended graves of Turkish Cypriots who were killed at the siege at Kokkina. The village itself still carries battle damage
14.
2011 Turkish Cypriot protests
–
In 2011, a series of rallies were held by Turkish Cypriots in North Nicosia against Turkeys policies on Cyprus. The first protest was held on 28 January 2011, after the hostile reactions of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkish society, Turkish Cypriots organized a second and third rally, using the same name, on 2 March and 7 April 2011. The average turnout was 50, 000–80,000, making some of the largest demonstrations by Turkish Cypriots under the occupation. As of 2011, Northern Cyprus had a population of approximately 290,000, during the final rally, unsuccessful attempts were made to hang the flag of the Republic of Cyprus on the Turkish embassy. The protests were criticized in Turkey due to their aggressive tone against Turkey
15.
Millet (Ottoman Empire)
–
In the Ottoman Empire, a millet was a separate legal court pertaining to personal law under which a confessional community was allowed to rule itself under its own laws. Despite frequently being referred to as a system, before the century the organization of what are now retrospectively called millets in the Ottoman Empire was far from systematic. Rather, non-Muslims were simply given a significant degree of autonomy within their own community, the notion of distinct millets corresponding to different religious communities within the empire would not emerge until the eighteenth century. After the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms, the term was used for legally protected religious minority groups, the word millet comes from the Arabic word millah and literally means nation. The millet system has been called an example of religious pluralism. The millet system has a history in the Middle East and is closely linked to Islamic rules on the treatment of non−Muslim minorities living under Islamic dominion. The concept was used even before the establishment of the Ottoman Empire for the communities of the Church of the East under the Zoroastrian Sassanid Persia in the 4th century. People were bound to their millets by their religious affiliations, rather than their ethnic origins, the millets had a great deal of power – they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. All that was required was loyalty to the Empire, later, the perception of the millet concept was altered in the 19th century by the rise of nationalism within the Ottoman Empire. After the decline of the Assyrian Church of the East in the 14th century, until the 19th century beside the Muslim millet, each official within each community was in charge of tax collection, education, justice and religious affairs. By doing so, however, the Ottoman administration was simply tolerating these non-Muslim communities and they were allowing them religious freedom in a way that kept them from resisting Ottoman rule. This kept these religious communities from prospering or being regarded as equals to Muslims, social discrimination was just as significant during these times as many Jews were unable to serve within the Ottoman armed forces and were unable to join the Ottoman ruling elite. They were granted freedom, however, at a cost. Armenians formed more than one millets under the Ottoman rule, a wide array of other groups such as Catholics, Karaites and Samaritans was also represented. The Orthodox Christians were included in the Rum Millet, or the Roman nation conquered by Islam, only later did a separate Catholic millet emerge. These groups included the Syriac Orthodox and the Copts, the Syriac Catholic community was recognized as its own millet in 1829. The Chaldean community was recognized as its own millet in 1846, the Syriac Orthodox community in the Ottoman Empire was for long not recognized as its own millet, but part of the Armenian millet. Then, during the Tanzimat reforms, the Syriac Orthodox were granted independent status with the recognition of their own millet in 1873, under the millet system the Jews were organized as a community on the basis of religion, alongside the other millets
16.
Lapithos
–
Lapithos or Lapethos is a town in Cyprus. De facto, it is under the control of Northern Cyprus, according to Strabo, the settlement was founded by Spartans. In Assyrian inscriptions, Lapithos is mentioned as one of the eleven Cypriot kingdoms, during the Persian rule, Lapithos was settled by Phoenicians. The last independent king Praxippos was subdued by Ptolemy I in 312 BC, Lambousa is the name currently used for the ancient Roman town on the coast about 3 kilometres north of the current Lapta. Strabo wrote that Lapethos is a construction of the Laconians and of Praxandros, the philosopher Alexander of Ephesus called it Imeroessa, meaning attractive and passion-arousing. Lapithos is usually referred in literature as a Laconian colony built after the Trojan War, by Praxandros. However, findings from excavations i. e. pots and pottery date back its existence as early as 3000 BC. According to Diodoros of Sicily, who wrote in the 4th century BC, peisistratos, king of Lapithos, with his flotilla, together with Nicocreon of Salamis and Stasanor of Curion, came to the aid of Alexander the Great, helping him to capture Tyre in Phoenicia. For this reason Alexander, the army commander, declared Cyprus free from the Persians. The last king of Lapethos was Praxippos, during the period of the Roman Empire, Lapethos had more than 10,000 inhabitants. It formed one of the four districts of Cyprus, from ancient times, Lapithos became a centre for the processing of copper and more importantly an earthenware centre. During the proto-Christian period Lapethos experienced a great commercial drive because of the plethora of its produce, during the first years of Christianity the apostles Paul, Barnabas and Mark passed by Lapethos coming from Tarsus. According to Apostle Barnabas, Lapethos had city walls and he cites that during his second tour with Apostle Mark, they stayed outside the walls because they were not given access to the city. In late antiquity, Lapethos enjoyed great prosperity in commerce as well as in riches, art, Lapethos was heavily damaged during the Arab incursions. The population often had to flee and take refuge in the interior, during the Lusignan period, Lapithos boasted a greater population than Limassol, Famagusta or Paphos. It was known under the name Le field de la Pison,3000 troops were stationed at Lapithos under the command of Zanetto Dandolo in the years preceding the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus in 1571. Dandolo was killed during the defence of Nicosia, in 1780 a section of Lapithos was split off to form a new village, Karavas. Lapithos became a municipality soon after the transfer of power to the British rule and it spreads from the high mountains of Pentadactylos to the waters of the Mediterranean
17.
Karamanlides
–
The Karamanlides, or simply Karamanlis are an Orthodox, Turkish-speaking people native to the Karaman and Cappadocia regions of Anatolia. Today, a majority of the population live within Greece, though there is a diaspora in Western Europe. Karamanlides were Greek-Orthodox Christians in Central Anatolia who had adopted Turkish as their primary language, the term is geographical, derived from the 13th century Beylik of Karaman. This was the first Turkish kingdom to adopt Turkish as its official language, after the Christians in the area were exchanged with Muslim population of Greece in 1923, the title became a label for local Muslim inhabitants. Historically, the Karamanlides adopted and spoke Karamanli Turkish and its vocabulary drew overwhelmingly from Turkic words with many Greek loan words. The language should not be confused with Cappadocian Greek, which was spoken in the region during the same timeframe. It should be noted while their language was Turkish, they employed the Greek alphabet to write it. Academic disputes over the origins of the Karamanlides have led to the formation of two major theories, according to the first theory the Karamanlides descended from Turkish soldiers that Byzantine emperors settled in Anatolia. The second theory states that Karamanlides are the descendants of Byzantine Greeks. Despite their linguistic Turkification, they maintained their Greek Orthodox faith, hence the process of Turkification was documented. It also has a precedent with the Copts in Egypt, who abandoned the Coptic language for Arabic as their first language. This event was mentioned by the Armenian historian Aristakes Lastivertsi in 1072, the territory was conquered by the Seljuk Turks first during the Battle of Manzikert. Many Karamanlides were forced to leave their homes during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, early estimates placed the number of Orthodox Christians expelled from central and southern Anatolia at around 100,000. However, the Karamanlides were numbered at around 400,000 at the time of the exchange, the former premier of Greece, named Karamanlis, has his roots in Karaman. From the 14th to the 19th centuries, they enjoyed an explosion in literary refinement, Karamanli authors were especially productive in philosophy, religious writings, novels, and historical texts. Lyrical poetry in the late 19th century describes their indifference to both Greek and Turkish governments, and the confusion they felt as a Turkish-speaking people with a Greek ethos
18.
Urums
–
The Urums, singular Urum are several groups of Turkic-speaking Greeks in the Crimea and Georgia. The term Urum is derived from the Arabic word روم, meaning Roman and subsequently Byzantine and Greek, in Ottoman Turkish under the Ottoman Empire, Rum denoted Orthodox Christians living in the Empire, in modern Turkish, Rum denotes Greeks living in Turkey. These Byzantine Greeks of Crimea are Pontic Greeks who colonised Crimea, however, the Greek settlers of the Crimea region underwent social and cultural processes, which led to them adopting the Crimean Tatar language as a mother tongue. In 1777, after the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Catherine the Great ordered all Greeks from the peninsula to settle in North Azov, throughout history, they represented an isolated cultural group and rarely settled in towns populated by the Romaioi, despite sharing Greek heritage with them. Unlike Greek, Urum has never been a language of education in Ukraine. Turkologist Nikolai Baskakov estimated that by 1969,60,000 people spoke Urum as a native language, according to the All-Ukrainian Population Census of 2001, only 112 of the Donetsk Oblasts 77,516 Greeks listed languages other than Greek, Ukrainian and Russian as their mother tongue. Little is known about this ethnic subgroup and they are sometimes referred to as the Trialeti Greeks or the Transcaucasian Turcophone Greeks. Pontic Greeks and Caucasian Greeks call them Τσαλκαλίδες, a name that refers to the Georgian town of Tsalka, many Pontian Greeks spoke Turkish either as Greek-Turkish bilinguals, or as a mother tongue due to linguistic assimilation processes that isolated groups of the Anatolian Greeks were exposed to. Georgia also had a population of Greek Muslims of Pontic Greek origin who spoke the Turkish dialect of Eastern Anatolia alongside their native Pontic Greek. During the Soviet era they populated over 20 villages in Georgias Tsalka, Dmanisi, Tetritsqaro, Marneuli, in 1926, there were 24,000 Greeks living in Tiflis and the neighbouring area with 20,000 of them being Turcophone. The dialect spoken by the Tsalka Urums is similar to many other Central Anatolian dialects of Turkish, however some linguists, like Nikolai Baksakov, classify it as a separate Oghuz language due to differences in phonetics, vocabulary and grammar. Present-day Urum Turkish is also thought by some to be closer to Azeri than to the literary Turkish. Late Soviet censuses also showed Azeri as the tongue of the Tsalka Urums. No secondary education in Urum Turkish has been available, its speakers attend schools where subjects are taught in Russian or Azeri, the Tsalka Urums themselves call their language bizim dilja our language. Many were assimilated and spoke Russian, also starting from the 1980s, there has been a modest cultural revival among the Turcophone Greeks. Historian Airat Aklaevs research showed that 36% of them considered Greek their mother tongue despite not speaking it, a documentation project on the language of Caucasian Urum people compiled a basic lexicon, a sample of translations for the study of grammar, and a text collection. The website of the project contains information about the language. Nevertheless, some migration did take place, so Greeks are no longer the largest ethnic group in Tsalka, between 1989 and 2002, their population declined from 35,000 to 3,000
19.
Vallahades
–
The Vallahades or Valaades were a Greek-speaking, Muslim population who lived along the River Haliacmon in southwest Greek Macedonia, in and around Anaselitsa and Grevena. They numbered about 17,000 in the early 20th century, most other Greek converts to Islam from Ottoman Macedonia, Thrace, and Epirus generally adopted the Turkish language and culture and thereby assimilated into mainstream Ottoman society. The name Vallaades comes from the Turkish-language Islamic expression vallah, even their call to prayer was said to be un-canonical and in Greek. Though some Western travellers speculated that Vallaades is connected to the ethnonym Vlach, de Jong has shown how the frequent Vallahades self-reference to their identity as Turks was simply used as a synonym for Muslims. However, most historians are in agreement with Hasluck, Vakalopoulos, according to Bulgarian geographer Vasil Kanchovs statistics there was 14,373 Greeks Muslims in southwestern Macedonia at the end of the 19th century. According to Greek statistics from 1904, however, there were at least 16,070 Vallahades in the kazas of Anaselitsa, in addition to continuing to speak Greek as their first language, the Vallahades also continued to respect their Greek and Orthodox Christian heritage and churches. The Vallahades were resettled in western Asia Minor, in towns as Kumburgaz, Büyükçekmece. Many Vallahades still continue to speak the Greek language, which they call Romeïka and have completely assimilated into the Turkish Muslim mainstream as Turks. The 1923 Population Exchange Greek Muslims Caucasus Greeks Cretan Muslims Pomaks Pontic Greeks Western Thrace Turks Cham Albanians Peter Alford Andrews, Rüdiger Benninghaus, ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey Wiesbaden, Reichert,1989. Victor A. Friedman, The Vlah Minority in Macedonia, Language, Identity, Dialectology, university of Chicago Selected Papers in Slavic, Balkan, and Balkan Studies. Full text Margaret M. Hasluck, The Basil-Cake of the Greek New Year, Folklore 38,2,143 JSTOR F. W. Hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans, Oxford,1929. Speros Vryonis, Religious Changes and Patterns in the Balkans, 14th-16th Centuries, in Aspects of the Balkans, Continuity, the Vallahades of Western Macedonia, in, History of Macedonia 1354-1833, Thessaloniki 1973
20.
Hemshin peoples
–
The term the Hemshin is also used in some publications to refer to Hemshinli. Robert H. Hewsen shows the region where todays Hemşin is located to be populated by a people with different designations throughout the ancient and he indicates thereby that some designations may have alternative forms and partially presents the names used with question marks. The Hemşin region is shown as part of Colchis, Tzanica, the specific location of Hemşin is indicated as Tambur/Hamamašen as a fort and town for the first time in the map covering the period 654–750. This event is declared by Mamikonian to have taken place in early seventh century, simonian who conveys this story reports also that the date given by the author may be wrong. Ghewond conveys this immigration to be to heavy taxes imposed on Armenians by the Arab rulers. The Amatuni lords are offered fertile land to settle down by the Byzantine Emperor and this migration is dated to be after 789 by Ghewond and as 750 by Stephen Asoghik of Taron. Redgate informs about possible symbolism used in the Ghewond’s history and possible garbling in Mamikonian’s history, hachikian states “There is no clue as to where Tambur, the legendary capital of Hamshen, was located. The only certain thing about it is that it belonged to a much earlier time- if it existed at all”. He also mentions in the footnote the name similarity between Tambur and a known as Tahpur or Tagpur, in the heights of Kaptanpasa. Simonian states that Tambur is probably in the vicinity of Varoşkale, hetum describes the region to be miraculous and strange place unbelievable unless seen by own eyes, dark and without roads. Signs of human settlement are that, the referenced translation suggests this Emperor could be Shapuhr II. Simonian considers the so described difficulty in not to imply total isolation. On the contrary, he reports, Hamshen served sometimes as a route between the coastal regions and the Armenian plateau. Robert W. Edwards has defined the geographical perimeters of that region, sources of the ruling powers in the region, are silent about Hemshin, until the conquest by the Ottomans. The Ottoman conquest of Hemshin occurred sometime in the 1480s, an Ottoman register dated around 1486 calls it Hemshin, in the 15th century, the region of Hamshen was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. During the Turkish rule, two most important developments are human migrations and conversions, most sources agree that prior to Ottoman era majority of the residents of Hemshin were Christian and members of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The details and the circumstances for the migrations and the conversions during the Ottoman era are not clearly known or documented. As a result of developments, distinctive communities with the same generic name have also appeared in the vicinity of Hopa
21.
International Standard Book Number
–
The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
22.
History of Cyprus
–
Human habitation of Cyprus dates back to the Paleolithic era. Cypruss geographic position has caused Cyprus to be influenced by differing Eastern Mediterranean civilisations over the millennia, Cyprus was settled by humans in the Paleolithic period who coexisted with various dwarf animal species, such as dwarf elephants and pygmy hippos well into the Holocene. There are claims of an association of this fauna with artifacts of Epipalaeolithic foragers at Aetokremnos near Limassol on the southern coast of Cyprus, the first undisputed settlement occurred in the 9th millennium BC from the Levant. The first settlers were agriculturalists of the so-called PPNB era, the dog, sheep, goats and possibly cattle and pigs were introduced, as well as numerous wild animals such as foxes and Persian fallow deer that were previously unknown on the island. The PPNB settlers built houses with floors made of terrazzo of burned lime and cultivated einkorn. Pigs, sheep, goat and cattle were kept but remained, for the most part, evidence of cattle such as that attested at Shillourokambos is rare, and when they apparently died out in the course of the 8th millennium they were not re-introduced until the ceramic Neolithic. In the 6th millennium BC, the aceramic Khirokitia culture was characterised by roundhouses, stone vessels, cattle were unknown, and Persian fallow deer were hunted. This was followed by the ceramic Sotira phase, the Eneolithic era is characterised by stone figurines with spread arms. Water wells discovered by archaeologists in western Cyprus are believed to be among the oldest in the world, dated at 9,000 to 10,500 years old and they are said to show the sophistication of early settlers, and their heightened appreciation for the environment. In 2004, the remains of an 8-month-old cat were discovered buried with its owner at a Neolithic archeological site in Cyprus. The grave is estimated to be 9,500 years old, predating Egyptian civilization, in the Bronze Age the first cities, such as Enkomi, were built. Systematic copper mining began, and this resource was widely traded, Mycenaean Greeks were undoubtedly inhabiting Cyprus from the late stage of the Bronze Age, while the islands Greek name is already attested from the 15th century BC in the Linear B script. The Cypriot syllabic script was first used in early phases of the late Bronze Age and continued in use for ca.500 years into the LC IIIB, the LCIIC was a time of local prosperity. Cities such as Enkomi were rebuilt on a grid plan. Great official buildings constructed from ashlar masonry point to increased social hierarchisation, some of these buildings contain facilities for processing and storing olive oil, such as Maroni-Vournes and Building X at Kalavassos-Ayios Dhimitrios. A Sanctuary with an altar constructed from ashlar masonry has been found at Myrtou-Pigadhes, other temples have been located at Enkomi, Kition. Both the regular layout of the cities and the new masonry techniques find their closest parallels in Syria, rectangular corbelled tombs point to close contacts with Syria and Palestine as well. The practice of writing spread and tablets in the Cypriot syllabic script have been found at Ras Shamra which was the Phoenician city of Ugarit
23.
Prehistoric Cyprus
–
The Prehistoric Period is the oldest part of Cypriot history. This article covers the period 10,000 to 800 BCE and ends immediately before written records of civilizations, Cyprus was not settled in the Paleolithic which allowed survival of numerous dwarf forms, such as dwarf elephants and pygmy hippos well into the Holocene. These animals are thought to have arrived on the island as a result of being out to sea while swimming off the coast of the nearby mainland. There are claims of an association of this fauna with artifacts of Epipalaeolithic foragers at Aetokremnos near Limassol on the southern coast of Cyprus, the extinction of the pygmy hippos and dwarf elephants has been linked to the earliest arrival of Homo sapiens on Cyprus. There is evidence of this because of the piles of burned bones in the occupied by these early humans in caves on the southernmost point on the Island. The oldest evidence of settlement is dated to 8800–8600 BC. The first settlers were already agriculturalists, but did not yet produce pottery and they introduced the dog, sheep, goats and maybe cattle and pigs as well as numerous wild animals like foxes and Persian fallow deer that were previously unknown on the island. The PPNB settlers built houses with floors made of terrazzo of burned lime and cultivated einkorn. Pig, sheep, goat and cattle were kept, but remained morphologically wild, evidence for cattle is rare and when they apparently died out in the course of the 8th millennium they were not reintroduced until the early Bronze Age. In the 6th millennium BC, the aceramic Choirokoitia culture was characterized by houses, stone vessels. The lithic industry was the most individual feature of this aceramic culture, the houses had a foundation of river pebbles, the remainder of the building was constructed in mudbrick. Sometimes several round houses were joined together to form a kind of compound, some of these houses reach a diameter of up to 10 m. Inhumation burials are located inside the houses, water wells discovered by archaeologists in western Cyprus are believed to be among the oldest in the world, dated at 9,000 to 10,500 years old, putting them in the Stone Age. They are said to show the sophistication of early settlers, plant remains indicate the cultivation of cereals, lentils, beans, peas and a kind of plum called Bullace. Remains of the animal species were recovered during excavations, Persian fallow deer, goat, sheep, mouflon. More remains indicate Red deer, Roe deer, a kind of horse, life expectancy seems to have been short, the average age at death appears to have been about 34 years, and there was a high infant mortality rate. In 2004, the remains of an 8-month-old cat were discovered buried with its owner at a Neolithic archeological site in Cyprus. The grave is estimated to be 9,500 years old, predating Egyptian civilization, the aceramic civilisation of Cyprus came to an end quite abruptly around 6000 BC
24.
Alashiya
–
Alashiya, also spelled Alasiya, was a state which existed in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, and was situated somewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was a source of goods, especially copper, for Ancient Egypt. It is referred to in a number of the texts and is now thought to be the ancient name of Cyprus. This was confirmed by the analysis performed in the Tel Aviv University of the clay tablets which were sent from Alashiya to other rulers. The name of the state transliterated as Alashiya is found on texts written in Egyptian, Hittite, Akkadian, Mycenean and it corresponds to the Biblical Elishah. Some of the Amarna letters are from the king or the ministers of Alashiya and they concern mostly the amount of copper that has been sent from Alashiya and requests for silver or ivory in return. One letter refers to 500 talents of copper and makes excuses as to why so little copper has been sent. Pharaoh is also referred to by the King of Alashiya as his brother, indicating that the king regarded himself as an equal, papyrus Anastasi IV, written several centuries later, also refers to copper sent from Alashiya to Egypt. Any place identified as Alashiya must therefore have had sizable copper production during the Late Bronze Age, there are a number of other clues in the texts. The Amarna letters contain references to a ship belonging to the King of Alashiya, in other correspondence, the King of Ugarit pleads for help from the King of Alashiya to protect Ugarit from the Sea Peoples. Another document from Ugarit records the banishment of two princes to the land of Alashiya, One further text found at Ugarit may contain a further clue to the location of the capital city of Alashiya, as it could imply that the city was located on a mountain. However, this word has more usually translated as shore. The extant ending of the Story of Wenamun records how Wenamun, Wenamun reports that he was almost killed by an angry mob, but was rescued by Hatbi, the princess of the town. Some of the last texts referring to Alashiya are from the Hittite Empire, however, with all such military reports it is difficult to assess the true outcome. Alashiya therefore needs to be situated somewhere where there was sizable Bronze Age copper production, on the coast, some scholars have suggested sites and areas of Syria or Turkey, but it is now generally agreed that Alashiya refers to at least part of Cyprus. Specifically, it was argued that the site of Enkomi was the capital of the kingdom of Alashiya. These examinations of the provenance of the used to create the tablets indicate that Syria could not be the location of Alashiya. However, this showed that the clays did not originate anywhere near the site of Enkomi
25.
Eteocypriot language
–
Eteocypriot was a pre-Indo-European language spoken in Iron Age Cyprus. The name means true or original Cyprian parallel to Eteocretan, both of which names are used by modern scholarship to mean the pre-Greek languages of those places, Eteocypriot was written in the Cypriot syllabary, a syllabic script derived from Linear A. The language was under pressure from Arcadocypriot Greek from about the 10th century BC, the language is as yet unknown except for a small vocabulary attested in bilingual inscriptions. Such topics as syntax and possible inflection or agglutination remain a mystery, partial translations depend to a large extent on the language or language group assumed by the translator, but there is no consistency. It is conjectured by some linguists to be related to the Etruscan and Lemnian languages and those who do not advocate any of those theories often adopt the default of an unknown pre-Greek language. Due to the number of texts found, there is currently much unproven speculation. Several hundred inscriptions written in the Cypriot syllabary cannot be interpreted in Greek, while the language of Cypro-Minoan inscriptions is often supposed to be the same as Eteocypriot, that has yet to be proved, as the script is only partly legible. The Eteocypriot text in Cypriot characters runs right to left, the Greek text in all capital Greek letters, ta kana sot-i, ail-o kail-i pot-i. Greek,3, Η ПΟΛΙΣ Η АΜАΘΟΥΣΙΩΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝΑ4, ΑΡΙΣΤΩΝΑΚΤΟΣ ΕΥΠΑΤΡΙΔΗΝ which might be rendered into modern script as,3, Ἡ πόλις ἡ Ἀμαθουσίων Ἀριστῶνα4, Ἀριστώνακτος, a suggested translation is, The polis of Amathusians, to Ariston Aristonax, nobleman. Cyrus Gordon translates this text as The city of the Amathusans the noble Ariston of Aristonax, gordons translation is based on Greek inscriptions in general and the fact that the noble Ariston is in the accusative case, implying a transitive verb. Gordon explains that the verb is omitted, the grammar of the Greek, however, is not necessarily that of the Eteocypriot. The inscription is important as verifying that the symbols of the unknown language, Gordon says, This bilingual proves that the signs in Eteocypriot texts have the same values as in the Cypriot Greek texts. However, as a bilingual it uses only a few Greek syllables to translate many Eteocypriot ones, Cypriot syllabary Etruscan civilization Aegean languages Etruscan language Liber Linteus – An Etruscan inscription. Tabula Cortonensis – An Etruscan inscription, cippus perusinus – An Etruscan inscription. Pyrgi Tablets – An Etruscan inscription, Lemnian language Eteocretan Cortona – Ancient Etruscan city. Forgotten Scripts, Their Ongoing Discovery and Decipherment, Revised and Enlarged Edition, notes on the Eteocypriot inscriptions, American journal of philology. A linguistic history of Ancient Cyprus, этеокипрское Omniglot – The Cypriot Syllabry
26.
Cypro-Minoan syllabary
–
The Cypro-Minoan syllabary is an undeciphered syllabary used on the island of Cyprus during the late Bronze Age. The term Cypro-Minoan was coined by Arthur Evans in 1909 based on its similarity to Linear A on Minoan Crete. Approximately 250 objects—such as clay balls, cylinders, and tablets, discoveries have been made at various sites around Cyprus, as well as in the ancient city of Ugarit on the Syrian coast. Little is known about how this script originated or about the underlying language, however, its use continued into the early Iron Age, forming a link to the Cypriot syllabary, which has been deciphered as Greek. Arthur Evans considered the Cypro-Minoan syllabary to be a result of uninterrupted evolution of the Minoan Linear A script and he believed that the script was brought to Cyprus by Minoan colonizers or immigrants. It is noteworthy that the Linear B script that emerged a century later still retained many features from. All this evidence indicates a one-time introduction rather than long-time development, the earliest inscriptions are dated about 1550 BC. This classification was and is accepted, but in 2011 Silvia Ferrara contested its chronological nature based on the archaeological context. Only the archaic CM found in the earliest archaeological context is indeed distinct from these three and it is noteworthy that the Cypro-Minoan script was absent in some Bronze Age cities of Cyprus, yet abundant in others. On the other hand, as a result of this collapse. As long as the script remains undeciphered, it can only be speculated whether the language was the same as Minoan or Eteocypriot, there were no visible traces of Minoan invasion, colonization, or even significant cultural influence in Bronze Age Cyprus. At that time, the island was part of the Near-East cultural circle rather than Aegean civilizations, based on the above-mentioned classification of the script into several varieties, Emilia Masson hypothetized that they may represent different languages that chronologically supplanted each other. The earliest known CM inscription found in Europe was a tablet discovered in 1955 at the ancient site of Enkomi. It was dated to ca.1500 BC, and bore three lines of writing, other fragments of clay tablets have been found at Enkomi and Ugarit. Dozens of small balls, each bearing 3–5 signs in CM1, have been uncovered at Enkomi. Clay cylinder seals have been uncovered at Enkomi and Kalavassos-Ayios Dimitrios and it is likely that the balls and cylinder seals are related to the keeping of economic records on Minoan Cyprus, considering the large number of cross-references between the texts. The extant corpus of Cypro-Minoan is not large enough to allow for the use of a cryptographic solution to decipherment. According to Thomas G. Palaima, all past and current schemes of decipherment of Cypro-Minoan are improbable, the names on the clay balls can thus be transcribed, some are Semitic, most are presumably in the local language
