KARPATHOS

Italian Scarpanto, island of the Dodecanese group in the Aegean Sea, Greece. The principal town of the 116-square-mile (301-square-kilometre) island is Pigdhia in the south behind Pigdhia Bay. Closely tied to the island of Rhodes in antiquity and the Middle Ages, the island was under Venetian rule from 1306 to about 1540, when it fell to the Turks. In 1912 it passed to Italy; after World War II it was awarded to Greece. The inhabitants of the rocky island, which is treeless except in the south, are engaged mostly in farming, horticulture, and grazing, but there is some fishing. Their Greek dialect, containing ancient Doric as well as modern Italian words, resembles that of Rhodes and Cyprus. Pop. (1981) 4,645.