The History of the Village

The events of the liberation of Pityos in 1912

November 11, 1912! A day of remembrance and celebration for the liberation of Chios! However, Pityos had to wait for another 40 days!

“…. After March 1912, when the Italians bombed the Turkish Telegraph station in Asia Minor, opposite of Chios, the Turks began to worry about the future occupation of the island and reinforced their garrisons. Upon reaching Pityos, Zichni Bey, the Commander of the Turkish Army, established his presence and stationed guard posts on the hills surrounding the village. The village’s churches and numerous houses were repurposed as storage facilities for the Turkish forces.”

“The Turkish hospital, housing the entire occupying army, was also in Pityos, located in the houses of Frangos and Katsaros. In addition to the village, they had supplies in Amethounta (altitude 1050 m). In October 1912, they connected Pityos via Flori, Engisha, Agios Markos, Agioi Pateres by telephone. Throughout October, Zichni Bey stayed in Pityos to organise its defence. Zichni Bey, always being polite to the villagers, left Pityos in early November. Saying goodbye to the locals, he stated, “Be well, now you will become Greeks…” (from the accounts of Pityos residents and eyewitnesses of the battles, Giannis Giannomoros and Dimitros Kazilas, cited in the newspaper “Proodos” in February 1952, as referenced by Georgos Heilas in “Pityos – History of my village,” pages 35-36, Athens 1989).

Pityos would remain occupied by the Turkish army until the early hours of December 21, 1912, when the last Turkish soldiers, under Lieutenant Abbas, surrendered to the squad of the warrant officer Stavridis, who had broken the last line of defence at Karfotos, on the borders of Pityos – Kardamyla, while Zichni Bey had already surrendered in Karyes a few hours earlier.

The Pityans, located at the center of Turkish power, did not proceed to form an armed resistance group – that would have been suicidal. However, to dispel suspicions that they did not participate in the national struggle, three villagers, Panagiotis Mithri Kritoulis, Pantelis Mavrianos, and George Apostolis (Giorgaras), acting on the orders of the Greek army command and pretending to be shepherds going to their flocks in order to break through the Turkish military blockades, went at night and cut the telephone cables connecting the Ottoman military administration in Pityos with the outpost of the third Turkish platoon in Achlada of Aipos. In fact, in order to make themselves credible to the Greek military command as to their national feelings, they did not limit themselves to a simple sabotage, but wound and took with them many metres of telephone wire, risking to be noticed by the Ottomans, as they were passing through their lines on their way to get to the Greek forces, with carrying about 6 metres of precious wire.

During this 40-day siege period, the broader area of Aipos and Pityos became the scene of the fiercest land battles of the First Balkan War on an Aegean Island:

• The first battle of Aipos on November 15, 1912, resulted in 25 Greek dead soldiers and 37 wounded. The first Turkish counterattack took place on the same day, from Karfoto of Pityos towards the Greek positions at the Castle of Gria in Kardamyla. Two Greeks were killed.
• On December 7 and 8, 1912, a two-day bombardment of the fortified Turks in Pityos was initiated by the Greek fleet off the coast of Kardamyla. 67 large calibre shells fell on the village, miraculously causing no human casualties.
• From December 19-21, 1912, the Greeks launched attacks from all sides towards Pityos, from Amades and Viki to Amethounta, from Fyta to Oros, and from Lagkada – Kydianta to Koila. The deadliest battle, which would determine the end of the war, took place with the Greek attack from Kardamyla towards Karfoto, the most heavily fortified and equipped Turkish outpost.

These battles would distinguish, for all kinds or reasons, certain officers from both armies.

On the Greek side, some individuals left their mark in history in one way or another:

• Τhe then First Lieutenant, Ioannis Demestichas: Leading the special forces of the marines, the elite of the Greek expeditionary force, who would raid during the initial phase of the campaign in Aipos. He broke the first line of Turkish defence, surprising them at the Castlelli of Aipos, around today’s Monument. However, Demestichas, a gunpowder-smoked and daring soldier of the Macedonian struggle, overestimated his capabilities and underestimated the opponent, leading his inappropriately dressed (in dark blue uniforms) marines into battle on an open front in the area above today’s Tourist Village of Aipos, where Turkish machine guns at the position of Sellada would halt the Greek attack, resulting in significant losses for the Greeks. A handwritten note was found on a dead Greek soldier’s uniform, stating: “We sacrificed ourselves in vain under Ioannis Demestichas”.

• Warrant Officer Ioannis Staridas, who, along with a squad of corporals, would lead the volunteer corps of Kardamyla, the first to be formed by local forces in Chios. They would establish an armed civil guard and participate in the battles. Staridas managed to instil, within a few days, his military professionalism into the enthusiastic but inexperienced volunteers of Kardamyla, who, under his leadership, would fight decisively in the final battles at Karfoto, Trachonas, and eventually occupy Theotokina and then Spiliotina, where, on December 21, 1912, the last 11 Ottoman officers and 297 soldiers from Pityos and Amethounta would surrender to the Greeks. A handwritten note found on the leader of their medical corps, Lieutenant Abbas, addressed to Staridas, expressed the desire to surrender to him and not to the irregular insurgents or the Cretan guards, whom they feared for reprisals: “To the officer of the Glorious Greek Army, Mr. Staridas, we are all 57 wounded soldiers of the Turkish army, one doctor, and I, the lieutenant for 40 days. We kindly ask you to take us tonight because we are very afraid. Oh dear officer of the Glorious Greek Army, our sincere respect to you. Lieutenant Abbas.” (Cheilas, p. 37).

• The capable captain, commander of the 3rd Turkish Company, Hüseyin Hüsnü Aydemir, who repelled the initial Greek attack on November 15 in Aipos: He would be captured along with the rest of the Turkish army, and he stayed for a year in captivity in Kefalonia. During World War I, he distinguished himself on the Eastern Front against the Russians (from whom he would be captured again and find himself exiled in Siberia). He would later fight against the Greeks in the battles of Sakarya river and Bursa. After 1923, he would climb the ranks in the Kemalist military hierarchy and retire as a major general in the 1930s. Recently, his grandson documented the memories of his grandfather’s wartime adventures and published them in a book in Turkey, which extensively mentions the Battle of Chios with hard-to-find documents from the Turkish side. (see http://www.geliboluyuanlamak.com/2439_vatan-mudafaasinda-bir-omur-huseyin-husnu-aydemir.html#_ftnref2).

RECOMMENDED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE LIBERATION OF CHIOS:

• “Osa o idios eidon” (As I Myself Saw) by Georgios Choremis, Chios 2002, ALFA PI Publications (from the author’s original manuscript)
• “Chius Liberata” by Philip Argenti, London 1937
• Special issues of the Pelinaio magazine, issues 14 & 20, Chios 2000 & 2002

Byzantine Empire

So, around today’s Pityos, when the Byzantines will temporarily regain Chios, a castle will be built in the location of today’s, initially wooden and of lower height. The castle appears in a golden bull of Michael Palaiologos the 8th in 1259 AC, leaving open the possibility that it might be even earlier.

At the same time (13th century AC), the adjacent church of Saint Dimitrios, located near the castle (of which part of the frescoes from the Late Byzantine Palaiologian period is still preserved), is dated by the Archaeological Service. Also, possibly the destroyed church of Panagia Spiliotina, which was a faithful copy of the New Monastery of Chios of the 11th century, dated back in this same period.

In a nearby area to the current settlement, near Panagia Theotokina, where ruins of an older settlement are preserved, a few decades ago, the villager Dimitris Zygklis (or Karydas) found a quantity of Byzantine coins. This area also appears in a golden bull of Michael Palaiologos as Arogeutos (Ayureutos in the local Pityan dialect). It is referred to as an area where the New Monastery of Chios has 100 acres of cultivable land.

On the nearby slope, near the road to Kardamyla, in an area full of pebbles, a few decades ago, the villager Dimitris Kazilas found a Byzantine metal cross.

A toponym of the Byzantine period that needs further investigation as to its origin is “Galatika.” Does it refer to estates owned by the Byzantine lords Galatides who appear in Izmir in the 11th century? Or perhaps to their descendants who will come to Chios later, during the Ottoman era, in the 17th century? (See Vasilis Agiannidis, “Oi Galates,” Aplotaria 2014, https://www.aplotaria.gr/galates-agiannidis/)

Another toponym of the period that needs exploration is the one mentioned in the ruins in the pastureland of Aipos: Androlakkos or Andronaktos. Andronaktos was a Byzantine lord of Chios, and the location bearing the same name, on the border of the pastures of Pityos and Anavatos, suggests that he might have had estates in the area. Several family names in Pityos are of Byzantine origin: Kritoulis, Mavrianos, Stasis, Chaviaros, Heilas, Chloros, Houliaris, and others.

Genoese Rule

The Genoese seized the island from the Byzantines in 1346 AD and held it for 220 years. The first thing they did was organise the economy and production of the island, dividing it into zones for the cultivation and storage of products vital to the economy of the colonial cooperative administration, the famous “Maona”.

Recognizing the natural strategic position of Pityos, they chose it as the capital of the “theme” of turpentine oil, the oil derived from the processing of resin, that is, from the tree of terebinth. This oil, when properly refined, was used in shipyards for preserving Genoese ships and in the roofs of houses as a natural waterproofing material. To produce the oil, they established a large laboratory in Pityos, employing 22 workers, which was a significant number for the time.

It was during this period that the old Byzantine castle was transformed into the current tower, with the aim of creating a large storage tank for the precious product on the ground floor.

To organise production and strengthen fortifications, they gathered scattered settlements into the present one and stationed a permanent military garrison. In the excavations for the restoration of the castle in the early 21st century, archaeologists found significant finds, such as Byzantine coins, and also coins from Naples-Italy, and Valencia-Spain, from the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as seals and everyday objects.

The inhabitants were called to live in the village under almost exclusive monopoly production of turpentine oil, the entirety of which, under strict and draconian laws, had to be delivered to the Maona. They were allowed to maintain only small household crops for sustenance.

The neighbourhood of the Castle, starting from the tower and reaching the present old square of Aplada, was enclosed by the external fortification of Kastrotoichos (fragments of it are still preserved in some parts of the village).

Thus, Pityos, in its present location, is a conglomeration of at least 13 smaller settlements, a fact found in other head villages of Chios, such as Pyrgi, Mesta, or Kardamyla. According to G. Zolotas, these settlements were Taxiarchis, Agios Ioannis, Agios Sideros, Agios Dimitrios, Skafi, Vrysidia, Fardy Pigadi, Theotokina, Gemellika, Kritiko, Flori, Remokastro, and Pyromachia. Larger or smaller even more ancient settlements are also noted in Spartina, Eklissidia, Aria, and Palaiopyrgos.

These small settlements indicate mediaeval installations of serfs or residents, essentially “metochia”, which is why in most of them, the name of the church they possessed has been preserved.

Specifically, Theotokina (a name derived from the mediaeval surname Theotokis) is located towards Kardamyla. Gemellika is historically related to the Gemellos family, who initially were in Koila and later moved to Kardamyla and Vrontados, and their descendants still exist there today.

The settlement of Kritiko indicates, according to the Pityans, a Cretan mediaeval settlement, from where also the name Kritikolakkos originated, the name of an area near Pityos. Pyromachia was located between Psira and Andronaktos, towards Agios Sideros, where the ruins of houses and of a church were located.

Additionally, the location of Martinos, near the village, refers to the Latin ruler of Chios, Martino of the Zaccaria family (he governed the island from 1314 to 1329 AD, before the Latin Crusaders being temporarily expelled by the Byzantines).

Finally, Fardy Pigadi is considered the main among the old villages of the area, the last abandoned settlement of which were reached by those who lived in the 19th century. It seems that it might have been the last one abandoned before its inhabitants settled in Pityos. In fact, until a few decades ago, those from Pityos who originated from there were called Fadrypigadousi.

In the Genoese history of the village, a distinct place is certainly held not only by the harsh economic colonial exploitation of the wealth and labour of the villagers but also by the pressure for a shift to Catholicism. Especially during the first period of Genoese rule when Constantinople remained Byzantine, and the rulers of the region and the Orthodox Church were concerned about choosing either union with Papal authority (“unionists”) with the aim of assistance from the Crusaders and the West, or separation (“separatists”) and almost certain submission to the threatening Ottomans in the area.

The incidents of the so-called miracle of Agia Paraskevi in Chios, with the great flood of 1432 that also affected Pityos, in which, according to folk tradition, dozens of villagers and hundreds of drowned goats and sheep in Makelo, may be related to the conflict in the church bays between the two doctrines.

At the same time, the Florentine Franciscan monk, geographer, and traveller Cristoforo Buondelmonti, will depict Pityos on the map of Chios he will draw after his travels to the islands of the Aegean and include it in his work “Liber insularum Archipelagi” (Book about the islands of the Archipelago) in 1420.

A series of surnames of Pityos families date back to the years of the Crusaders and Genoese rule, such as Vergus, Bereta, Frango, Fekos, Fetis, and others, while the widespread surnames Giannomoros and Papamoros are compounds of the Latin “moro,” meaning “dark-skinned.”

The entire plain of Aipos and the forest to the west of the village have hundreds of scattered agrarian installations with elements dating back to Byzantine, Roman, Hellenistic, Ancient, or even pre-Hellenic period.

The name Pityos itself derives from the ancient Ionian word “Pitys,” meaning pine tree. With the name Pitys, it is recorded in the biography of Homer by Pseudo-Herodotus, the passage of the great ancient poet through the village. It is characteristic that during the time of Ancient Greek colonisation in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, two other locations would be named in the same way. One is the well-known present-day islands of Ibiza and Formentera, the Ancient “Pityouses Islands,” in the Balearics of Spain. The other is the less-known coastal town called Pitsunda, in the Tauric Colchis, in Abkhazia, Georgia, the ancient “Pityos” of the Black Sea. Both Ionian and Milesian colonies respectively seem to have been founded around the 5th century BCE and bear the same name, Pityos.

Historian Zolotas attributes to the broader area of Pityos in Chios a series of sites with intense archaeological interest. Even to this day, over a century after Zolotas recorded them, most of these areas have not been explored, except for a few exceptions. According to Volume A of his Topography, carved stone wells have been found in the area of “Aria”, dating back to the first inhabitants of Chios, the Pelasgians, around 2000 BCE, and certainly before the Ionian colonisation of Chios in the 11th century BCE. Similarly, the same applies to Remokastro (or Limokastro, or Ellinokastro) next to the ancient agrarian settlement of Spartina. Remokastro and Spartina, in fact, are the only sites that, in the early 1980s, drew the attention of the German Archaeological Service, which, together with the Greek Archaeological Service, conducted the only non-surface excavations in Aipos, confirming the long history of the area, even before classical antiquity.

The invasion of the forces of the tyrant of Miletos, Histiaeus, and the siege of Chios in 494 BCE place areas between Delphini and today’s Pityos, in the positions of Koila and Paleopyrgos Skafis, on the map of ancient history with large and significant fortification works. These, as a recent study by Archaeologist Despina Tsardaka showed, were almost certainly used later during the Peloponnesian War, the Chian resistance to the Athenian Alliance, and the unsuccessful invasion of the Athenians on the island from Delphini. It is very likely that these events also gave rise to the uprisings of the slaves.

Zolotas also notes the discovery of ancient wine presses at the location, giving the name “Lenoi,” while also noting the discovery of a significant quantity of coins, 50 silver and 175 bronze, and artefacts in tombs found in Machairopetra of Oros, above today’s Pityos. This discovery probably occurred in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, without any historical or archival record, as some of these artefacts are displayed in the numismatic collection of the Museum of Berlin, as noted by the museum’s Numismatic Journal in INDEX No 1117, stating that they were found in 1885 and date back to 334-332 BCE! (See the newspaper “Chian People” 16/5/1984 and Heilas, pp. 23-25).

The myths of Homer and Drimakos from the 8th and 4th centuries BC, respectively, are not without reason, as they testify to the many scattered place names. Additionally, we know that during the 6th and 5th centuries BC, the bards of Chios, known as the Homerides, were active in the broader area of Northern Chios, serving as continuators and preservers of the Homeric Epics.

Crucial for documenting the ancient history of the village is the existence of the Hellenostrata, an ancient path that begins from the hights above Myrsinidi in Vrontados, branches in Aipos in the area of Fountana, with one branch going north to the villages of Sykiada, Lagkada, and from there to Kydianta and Koila up to Pityos. Another branch comes from Aipos to Flori and from there bifurcates. The southern road leads to Anavatos and central Chios. The western one through the forest leads to Katavasi and Volissos. Locals call it “the path of Homer,” and until the mid-19th century, it was the only communication route, making the area of Pityos a communication hub in Northern Chios. The term “Hellenostrata” (as well as “Hellenotichos”) is likely of Byzantine origin. With the prefix “Helleno-,” Byzantine Christians referred to works or structures of ancient Greek origin. The concept of “Hellenes” was synonymous with “National” and identified the ancient Greeks as pagans.

As for late antiquity, Hellenistic times, Roman, and the early Byzantine years, we do not yet have findings, as comprehensive archaeological research has not been conducted, except for the fact that many of the dry-stone constructions in Aipos seem to date back to those years. Moreover, Remokastro is mentioned to have functioned as a permanent fortification until the early Byzantine centuries.