Morphou

Morphou stands in the fertile plain near the northwestern coast of Cyprus. Its church of Saint Mamas was a celebrated shrine, associated by local tradition with Byzantine frontier soldiers who settled here. The surrounding country preserves traces of much earlier life, including the Bronze Age settlement of Toumba tou Skourou near the Ovgos River.

Under the Lusignan kings, Morphou formed part of a feudal estate. The Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas named it among the centres of a peasant revolt against Frankish rule in 1426. The rising was suppressed after several months, and the district suffered punishment. Saint Mamas continued to draw devotion under Venetian and Ottoman rule; letters of the patriarch in 1601 describe its monastery as one of the island's important religious houses. The shrine thus endured through the succession of rulers who governed the plain.