Dembea

Dembiya

Dembiya

Historic region of Ethiopia


Dembiya (Amharic: ደምቢያ Dembīyā; also transliterated Dembea, Dambya, Dembya, Dambiya, etc.) is a historic region of Ethiopia, intimately linked with Lake Tana. According to the account of Manuel de Almeida, Dembiya was "bounded on East by Begemder, on South by Gojjam, on West by Agaws of Achefer and Tangha. Lake Tsana, formerly called Dambaya, is in this region."[1] The region was governed by Ahmed ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi and also served well as his personal residence and seat of government during the Ethiopian-Adal War. The rest of the province was divided among the Adalite soldiers while the native Amhara population served as peasant farmers.[2][3] Alexander Murray, in his preface to the third volume of Bruce's account, further describes it as "on the east it includes Foggora, Dara, and Alata; on the north-east Gondar, the metropolis, and the rich district beneath it; on the southwest, the district of Bed (the plain barren country) and, on the west, the lands around Waindaga and Dingleber."[4]

Dembiya was incorporated into the Begemder province (which previously only included lands to the east of Lake Tana) during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, and in 1996 became a woreda of the Amhara Region.


References

  1. Quoted in H. Weld Blundell, The Royal chronicle of Abyssinia, 1769-1840, (Cambridge: University Press, 1922), p. 538
  2. Shihāb al-Dīn, Aḥmad ibn ʻAbd al-Qādir (2003). Futūḥ Al-Ḥabaša: The Conquest of Abyssinia [16th Century]. Translated by Stenhouse, Paul Lester. Hollywood, California, USA: Tsehai Publishers & Distributors. p. 380. ISBN 9780972317269.
  3. Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, (1805 edition), vol. 3 p. 9

12.3500°N 37.2556°E / 12.3500; 37.2556


Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Dembea, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.