Mesaoria

The Mesaoria (Greek: Μεσαορία, Turkish: Mesarya) is a broad, sweeping plain which makes up the north centre of the island of Cyprus.

The Mesaoria is the name given to the broad tract of plain which extends across the island from the Bay of Famagusta in the east to that of Morphou in the west, which is a length of 60 miles, with a breadth varying from 10 to 20 miles.

The streams which traverse it are mere winter torrents, which descend from the southern chain but scarcely reach the sea. The Pedias (Pediaeus) and lalias (Yialias, Idalias) lose most of their flood waters in the marshes about Salamis, near the Bay of Famagusta. The Pedias rises near Machaira and passes close to Nicosia, indeed flowed through it before the river was diverted by the Venetians. The lalias rises very near the source of the Pedias, passes through Nisou, Dali (the ancient Idalion) and Pyroi, and traverses the Mesaoria in a direction more or less parallel with the Pedias. A smaller but more constant streams is the Cares (Clarios), which flows from the slopes of Troodos into the Bay of Morphou.

The Mesaoria plain is bounded on the east and west by the Mediterranean Sea, on the south by the Troodos mountains and on the north by the Kyrenia mountains (Pentadaktylos). It has an area of approximately 1000 km² (390 mi²). It rises to an altitude of 325 m (1066 ft), with an average elevation of perhaps 100 m (330 ft). There are a number of rivers and other water courses crossing this plain, but none of them have water year round.

The Alluvial Plains of the centre of the island are for the most part the product of successive rain-storms and floods which have brought down from the mountains immense quantities of light debris which has been spread over the lower lands, principally by human agency exerted in the system of colmatage, which has been practised from time immemorial. This has resulted in the general raising of the land surface and incidentally in the natural reclamation of many acres of land in the lower parts of the Mesaoria, which once were arms of the sea.

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Wikipedia