From Nicosia The territory is located on the upper basin of the Salty river, a tributary of the river Simeto; it creeps strategically between the Nebrodi centers and those in the Valley Dittaino.
Its particular situation geomorphological favored in Nicosia, during the early history, the so-called "trogloditismo", ie human l`insediamento in natural or artificial caves, scattered in the urban fabric of Nicosia and Sperlinga, such as in C / by Santi forty (remains of a necropolis with tombs carved into a rocky ridge on the sweat stream Fiumetto), in C / da Perciata (tombs arcosolium), Dodge in the Red (rock castle), in Monte S. Onofrio and Cozzo S. Marco (underground Early Christian), and in the Contrada Vaccarra caves.
In Roman and late antiquity, the ancient settlements were then used mainly to funerary purposes, while during the centuries of the Middle Ages were reused as castrum or the privileged places of the territorio.Durante control the more recent times, the same caves were eventually used as rural and as production sites housing (millstones, kilns, barns, silos, etc.).
Inside the old town of Nicosia it was reported various finds from the Roman period, referring to the necropolis: the Beritelli La Via (and then the Narbone - 1852 -) refers to the presence in Monte S. Giorgio of "tombs, baths, oil lamps, mosaics, greek-Sicilian vases, ed`argento copper medals with inscriptions of Hiero II, Caio Plutio console, G. Caesar, Octavian Augustus, d`altri emperors "; all`inizio of the twentieth century are discovered in the vicinity of the city "... Roman imperial d`età graves containing coins of Tiberius, Marcus Aurelius, Faustina, and other Emperors" (Bears, 1900).
Since 1970, the territory of Nicosia has been the subject of exploration also from the University of Messina (prof. James Scibona) on behalf of the Superintendency of Agrigento, which indicates, among l`altro, "... the presence of ceramic fragments attributable to advanced imperial age ... in a next cut to the Tower of the Castle "(Scibona 1993: 333), and a late Roman rural settlement on Cozzo della Croce.
In Nicosia site it was assumed to identify the ancient city of the hinterland of the island where in place do not know the old location; in particular:
- Engyon, the Cretan city of the Mother Goddesses, which Diodorus puts in about 18 km from Agira;
- Herbita, Sicilian city that was able to resist the siege of the tyrant Dionysius, whose prince Archonides II founded the city of Halesa;
- Imachara, pre-Greek city, mentioned by Cicero in the Verrines as a center rich in fertile countryside.
It was also suggested an origin of Sican "Nicosia" name: according to Diodorus, the saga of Minos, Daedalus and Kokalos takes place in Sicily, set in the city of Camico; However, in the oldest version of the myth, the story is set in the city instead of Inykon or Inikos [1]: Cocalo was the king of the Sicilian, and dominated them ... the greater part of Sicania, and it was his directorial Inico, or it is imitated city destrutta ... Besides d`Inico still reigned Iccara Cocalo, Erice, Maccara, Camico and Omsace, ancient castles of Sicania, l`ultimo of which was the oldest part of that famous city, which Agrigento afterwards he told himself.
As in Sicily, during the Sican period, the largest river was designated as Ynykos (or, more simply, his voice "Ny`ku"), probably the city of Inikon AG was so called because near the biggest river then, the Ynykos or Ny`ku (current Salty river, former Imera). Because, in the Semitic language (the language of Sicani), the land or the city is called Shya, then the voice Nicosia, read from the ancient Semitic "Nyku`shìa" could mean "the Ny`ku cities (Shya)" ( ie the Ynykos River, identified with the Salty).
But, regardless of these hypotheses, l`origine Nicosia dell`Isola should go back to the Byzantine era.
In the second half dell`VIII century, under the reign of Leo III the Isaurian (675-741 AD), they were issued a series of edicts to eliminate the cult of sacred images (iconoclasm): with the first imperial edict of 726 AD, was sets the destruction of icons and this led to a revolt of the defenders of the cult of images (so-called Iconodules); but the emperor responded by perpetrating a terrible persecution of those monks who did not accept the imposition. It witnessed such a massive transfer of Greek-Byzantine towards South Italy and to Sicily in particular.
As a result, in Sicily, several villages were occupied or built by Byzantine nuclei Stratioti (soldier-monks-farmers) who, once they arrive on the island, often called this their new settlement with the name of the place of origin; then you can assume that, around the eighth century AD, Byzantine Stratioti, to defend themselves from Arab coastal raids, they raised a stronghold nell`attuale Monte San Giorgio, around which they took refuge Christian populations, giving rise to a village that was the first nucleus of the future city of Nicosia.
And if we assume that the new village was inhabited by fugitives of Cyprus from Neycosia or Leucosia capital, we can assume that they named it the Nicosaion village name then transformed by the Arabs in Niqu`s În.
[1] Herodotus VII, p.170
