Hadji Suliman

The field notebook of the British Museum's 1896 excavation at Enkomi, written by Percy Christian, repeatedly names a landowner, Hadji Suliman. The expedition opened about 100 tombs between March and September, and the finds were divided between the British Museum and the Cyprus Museum^1,2. Tomb 12 appears as "Hadj Suleiman's tomb"; an ox stepped into it while ploughing, which in the notebook's words led "to the draining of the cemetery"^1,3. Tomb 26 is in "Hadji Suliman's field", and Tombs 42, 43, 45, 47, 48, 51, 52, 65, 68, 69, 90 and 91 lie in or in the lower part of it. Tomb 67 is on the boundary between his land and that of a man named Adamos, and Tomb 66, a rich built tomb, is on the boundary between his field and that of Evangelis^1,2. The notebook spells his name several ways, among them Suliman, Sulimian and H. Suliman.

"Hadji" is the title of a man who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and the notebook gives no other name. Filios Zanettos, as quoted by Lila Marangou, wrote that the Enkomi owner was "a Turk called Suleiman", who let the British Museum dig without compensation and refused the two shillings it offered him in a coffee shop at the end of the work⁴. Zanettos gives no forename either. The notebook's landowner and his Suleiman share a name and a site. Nothing is recorded of the owner's dates or life.