İnformation about Aslanköy(Angastina)
It is suggested by Nearchos Clerides, in Villages and Cities of Cyprus, that Angastina had been named from the Frank word gastina for crust. This alludes to the thick rocky shell rock (kafkala-Greek Cypriot for crust) that covered the surrounding mesas and on which the last version of the village was built. He suggests that name was modified by the locals and made their own by adding the A.This is a likely possibility as the nearby village of Mora was “entirely a Frankish town under Frankish occupation. It was owned by the House of Moravit and it was named Mora for short. Cyprus at that time was ruled by the French House of Lusignan.” The Franks arrived in Cyprus “in the high and late Middle Ages, between 1192 and 1489. However George Jeffrey speculates that the name (on ancient maps “Angestrina ") may be from “neo-latin origin (1500-1900)”. Christos Diakos in Angastina - History and Traditions agrees, pointing out that the “The church of Agios Therapon existed at our village since Byzantine time. The name of the village was Agios Therapon. The name Angastina appears at the time of the Latin Venetians.”
Whatever is the case, Angastina is renowned for its long history which goes back to prehistoric times. Until 1950 it was on the rail line that connected Famagusta and Nicosia but now on that same carriageway is built a modern motorway.
However Angastina was not always perched over the plains. There are still remnants of an older location of the village, to the south east towards Assia, which are still called Halospita (Ruined Houses). It is thought that either the devastation of The Plague in the 1430s or flooding from the Pedias River forced the original inhabitants to relocate the village to its present location: Latitude 35.204 and Longitude 33.583, about 70 metres above sea level.
Angastina is renowned for its Cypro-Mycenaean archaeological burial site of Vouno which was excavated 2 km east of the village in the 1962 when the new road to Famagusta was put through. According to Georgious Kyriakos in Cyprus Heritage, at the Cyprus Museum there are artefacts found in Vouno, such as “A Composite vase of White Painted V ware. It consists of four spherical parts joined to a common neck with a pinched mouth. A female figurine is attached to the neck; her right hand holding her breast and the left her abdomen.” This dates from the Middle Cypriot III period (1725–1625 BC).
During the Crusades, the village or near it was a fort for the cavalry of the Knight Templars (1291) and locations still bear within living memory such names as The Stables of the Kavalirides (the stables of the cavalry) or The Kavalarides. Since the Turkish invasion in 1974, the village has been solely inhabited by Turkish mainland settlers.
