Alaminos (, ) is a village in the

Larnaca District The Larnaca District, or simply Larnaca (also Larnaka), is one of the six districts of Cyprus. Its capital is Larnaca. It is bordered on the east by Famagusta District, on the north by Nicosia District and on the west by Limassol District. A sma ...

Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...

, west of the city of

Larnaca Larnaca, also spelled Larnaka, is a city on the southeast coast of Cyprus and the capital of the Larnaca District, district of the same name. With a district population of 155.000 in 2021, it is the third largest city in the country after Nicosi ...

. In 1960, it had 564 inhabitants, with a roughly equal number of Greek and Turkish Cypriots. In 2011, its population was 345.

History and culture

Alaminos is the site of discovery of a

Chalcolithic The Chalcolithic ( ) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in di ...

clay feminine "lactation" figurine, with hands pressing breasts. Philip of Ibelin,

seneschal The word ''seneschal'' () can have several different meanings, all of which reflect certain types of supervising or administering in a historic context. Most commonly, a seneschal was a senior position filled by a court appointment within a royal, ...

of the

Kingdom of Cyprus The Kingdom of Cyprus (; ) was a medieval kingdom of the Crusader states that existed between 1192 and 1489. Initially ruled as an independent Christian kingdom, it was established by the French House of Lusignan after the Third Crusade. I ...

, had an estate at Alaminos, where he was banished in 1308. The area is home to a still-extant coastal watchtower built under the Venetian rule. There is also the old Church of Agios Mamas, which was restored in 2006. In the Middle Ages, Alaminos housed a monastery where the Georgian monks were active. The medieval Georgian hagiographic ''Life of St. John and Euthymius'' reports the Byzantine emperor

Basil II Basil II Porphyrogenitus (; 958 – 15 December 1025), nicknamed the Bulgar Slayer (, ), was the senior Byzantine emperor from 976 to 1025. He and his brother Constantine VIII were crowned before their father Romanos II died in 963, but t ...

's unsuccessful persuasion of Euthymius the Athonite to take the chair of the deceased archbishop of "Salamino". A monastery operated by the Georgians at Alaminos is also mentioned by the Dominican Stephen de Lusignan, whose chronicle was published in Paris in 1580. The Alexandrian Patriarch

Cyprian Cyprian (; ; to 14 September 258 AD''The Liturgy of the Hours according to the Roman Rite: Vol. IV.'' New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company, 1975. p. 1406.) was a bishop of Carthage and an early Christian writer of Berbers, Berber descent, ...

, a Cypriot, writing in the late 18th century, reiterates that the Georgians once possessed "some Monasteries near Alamino, in the district of Mazoto, Cyprus" and adds that "no representatives of this sect are to be found, however, in the island at the present day." Another important Georgian monastic foundation in Cyprus was the

Gialia Monastery The Gialia Monastery ( ka, ღალია, ''Ğalia''; ) is a ruined Georgian Orthodox monastery from the medieval period. It is located in the village of Gialia, Paphos District, northwest Cyprus. The monastery is dedicated to the Virgin Mary (Th ...

, some 149 km northwest of Alaminos. During the 1974 war between Turkey and the Greek Cypriot National Guard, 15 Turkish Cypriot men in Alaminos were massacred by the national guardsmen on July 20, in reprisal for the death of the guard unit's commander in a fight with Turkish troops. In December 2016, an archaeological expedition from Georgia located ruins of a church building and 14 graves, probably dating from the 12th to the 16th century.

References

Communities in Larnaca District Archaeological sites in Cyprus {{Cyprus-geo-stub Turkish Cypriot villages depopulated after the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus