Debarwa

Coordinates: 15°06′N 38°50′E / 15.100°N 38.833°E / 15.100; 38.833
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Debarwa
ድባርዋ
دباروا
Market town
UTC+3 (EAT
)

Debarwa (

Debub ("Southern") administrative region
(one of five in Eritrea).

History

Debarwa was one of the most important settlements in northern Ethiopia during the medieval era. An Ethiopian monk, Brother Antonio, told the Venetian scholar Alessandro Zorzi in the 1520's that it was the "chief city" and residence of the

Ahmed Gragn overran the region. The Portuguese expedition under Cristóvão da Gama spent the rainy season of 1542 in Debarwa, Miguel Castanhoso, a member of the Portuguese force, found the region "depopulated through fears of the Moors", for "the inhabitants had taken refuge with their herds on a mountain."[2] The seizure of Massawa by the Ottomans in 1557 and their subsequent advance inland led to further difficulties. The Turks soon occupied Deberwa, but due to the resistance of the local population they were forced to retreat back to Massawa.[3][4]

Conflict flared up again in 1561, during the reign of Emperor

Hirgigo and advanced inland to take Debarwa again but was again defeated by Sarsa Dengel who killed the Turkish commander Kadawred Pasha in battle.[6][7]

The French traveller

Tigray". Though still a flourishing political and commercial center in Poncet's day, Debarwa was beginning to be overshadowed by the more southernly town of Adwa, which soon became the main metropolis of northern Ethiopia. With the decline of Debarwa, the status of the Bahr Negash further dwindled. Poncet noted that the office had been divided with two separate officials bearing the title who established themselves in different localities.[8]

The city was hit hard by a typhus epidemic in 1893, which followed the misery of the Great Famine (1888-1892). A French visitor described Debarwa as "decimated", and all that was left of the once prosperous town were "a few piles of stones, an almost ruined church, and a few wretched hovels".[9]

Demographics

The majority of the population in Debarwa belongs to the Bihér-Tigrigna (

Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church
.

Economy

Local people bring produce such as potatoes, tomatoes, chickens and grain to the market every Saturday. Aside from being a market town, it is also a mining town with resources of high grade

Hitachi once operated a mine near Debarwa, but it was shut down in the 1960s due to the outbreak of the Eritrean War of Independence from Ethiopia.[citation needed
]

References

  1. ^ Older writers, such as Samuel Purchas, often use a corrupt form of its name, "Barua".
  2. ^ R.S. Whiteway, editor and translator, The Portuguese Expedition to Abyssinia in 1441-1543, 1902. (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1967), pp. xlvif, 9
  3. Richard Pankhurst
    , The Ethiopian Borderlands (Trenton: Red Sea Press, 1997), pp. 234-238
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  9. ^ Richard Pankhurst, An Introduction to the Medical History of Ethiopia (Trenton: Red Sea Press, 1990), p. 36