-ια from Turkish: kurban and ultimately from Arabic: قربان, romanized: qurbān, sacrificial rite analogous to Jewish qorban) is a Christianized animal sacrifice in parts of Greece.
The practice involves the blood sacrifice (θυσία, thusia) of a domestic animal to either a saint, taken as the tutelary of the village in question, or dedicated to the Holy Trinity or the Virgin.
In the time of anye disease or peril, they promise in certaine places to sacrifice either a Shepe or Oxe; after that the vowed offering is not burned, like unto a beast killed and layed on the aulter, as the custome was among the Jewes, but after that the beast is slaine, the skinne, head, feete, and fourthe parte of the flesh are gene unto the prest, an other part to poore people, and the thirde unto their neighbours.
"[1]In the late nineteenth century, Greek Christians of the village of Zele (Sylata) in Cappadocia sacrificed animals to Saint Charalambos especially in time of illness.
Though the Greeks frequently referred to these sacrifices by the Turkish term Kurban, the sacrificial practices went back to Byzantine and pagan times as is evident from several factors.
Although the sacrifice is attached to a tradition of the Agios Haralambos Church, it actually holds its roots with the Buphonia (Greek: Βουφόνια "ox-slayings"), a sacrificial ceremony performed in Ancient Greece as part of the Dipolieia, a religious festival held on the 14th of the midsummer month Skirophorion— in June or July.
[8] In the late 18th century, a monk Nicodemus denounced the kourbania as a "barbaric custom" and "vestige of ancient pagan error", without success, as he was himself accused of heresy by the village priests.
Georgoudi (1979) prefers a comparison with the Hebrew sacrifices korban of the Old Testament, citing early medieval canons and conciliaries which denounce customs such as cooking meat in the sanctuary as Jewish and Armenian Christian, not Greek, practice.