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Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
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CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM
Exerpta Cypria
page 127

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PAßUTA. MJSIOXAX. Π9 savage n! orime, but the time which lie allowed to pass between the first sentence ami the later ancl more cruel tortnres lends it some probability. It was mere madness which stirred him to rage even against the dead. He entered the Episcopal Chnrch of S. Niccolo, caused the grm'as to be opened and the bones scattered. He destroyed the altars and the images of the evinte, and committed other bestial and cruel acts for which he was mnch blamed even by his o""" people. Thej city thus acquired, order was taken at once carefully to clear the ditches of the rains of t the walls, to raie all the forts, and fill all the trenches outside, and to repair all that had bee" destroyed within. Tlins the fortress was soon restored to its original condition, and niw'e even more seonre and defensible than it had been before. Mustafa Pasha put the Bey of Rhodes in charge of the city, and on the twenty-fourth of September left Cyprus, returning victorious aud triumphant to Constantinople, where he was received with high honours and universal joy> Yet the victory had cost the Turks dear, for they had lost, so report said, more than fifty thousand men, and among them many commaiKlers of high rank, and their best warriors. LUSIGXAN. Fr. Evenne de Lusignan'e description of Nicosia and Fainagusta is here translated from hi» Choit*-graffia, Bologna» 1578, pp. 11 and 14—16. It should be compared with the French version, 4to, Paris, 1580. Dcêet^Pti'an de toute nie de Cgprt...eomjKuiee preincrement en Hallen, et imprimée ά Bologne /» Orasse, et nßaintenaut augmentée et traduite en Francois. Letra, an ancient city, but it is not known who first founded it: it was afterwards restored by Leucico or Lenco, son of the first Ptolemy, king of Egypt, who called it Leucoton. This is Nicosia, wpich is an ancient city, bnt it is not exactly known who first built it, and when. It is evident that it is ancient, and S. Jerome and Platina and others call it Letra or Leucoton, naming a bishop S. Triffillns—Triffilhis of Letra iu Cyprus, Leucoton. The Latins now call it Nicosia bivf the Greeks Leucosia : and some say that Leuco and Sia his wife built it, and in olden days traces of it were visible. It was a royal city in the time of the nine contemporary kings, and it had a castle which was in the upper square near the river, where one finds now a Greek cht,TCh which is called Castegliotissa. This castle was destroyed by the townsfolk, at the time of the engagement with the knights Templar, whom the former wonld not hare to reign in (vyprus; and this was about 1194. And later in the time of the Lnsignan kings it was made an archiépiscopal and royal residence, and the capital of the whole island, for the site on which it stands is in the middle of the island, and the middle of the plain; the air is excellent, the water delicate, the spot pleasantly full of gardens nnd fruits. Immediately outside it it has two springs, one called Piadia [Πηγάδια] and the other Sweet Water, and this one passes throngh the city, and supplies several fountains in the palaces, the court and the square and other places, and this water is light and is given just as it is tu sick people to drink as muc'h as they will, and it does no harm. And for these reasons the city was in the days of the Lnsignan kings much adorned with nobles, palace*, and churches, Latin, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Maronite, Indian, Ncstorian, Jacobite, and those of the Iberi or Georgians,

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