Ankober

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Ankober
State : EthiopiaEthiopia Ethiopia
Region : Amhara
Coordinates : 9 ° 36 '  N , 39 ° 44'  E Coordinates: 9 ° 36 '  N , 39 ° 44'  E
Height : 2,465 meters above sea level
 
Residents : 2,288 (2005)
Time zone : EAT (UTC + 3)
Ankober (Ethiopia)
Ankober
Ankober

Ankober (also Gorobela ) is a city in central Ethiopia and one of the capitals of the former Kingdom of Shewa . It lies in the North Shewa - zone in the administrative region of Amhara .

geography

Landscape panorama near Ankober

Ankober is located at the southern end of a narrow high plateau on the edge of the Great Rift Valley , which leads 2000 meters down near Ankober.

The city is about 23 km southeast of Debre Berhan . A little closer is the village of Aliyu Amba, about 7 kilometers southeast of Ankobar .

Flora and fauna

The Ankobergirlitz , which is endemic to the Ankober area, bears the name of the city. The bird was first described by the English ornithologist William Swainson in 1827. The seed eater is listed as "endangered" on the IUCN Red List . The Guereza monkeys , blood-breasted baboons and bearded vultures endemic to the area can also be observed around Ankober.

Which was only in 1997 first described scientifically aloes -Art Aloe ankoberensis . The plant can be found on the steep, rocky slopes and cliffs at an altitude of around 3000 to 3500 meters around Ankober.

history

The earliest written records about Ankober date back to the 12th century when King Yekuno Amlak established his seat in this region.

Ankober translates as the “Gate of Anko”, whereby Anko was the wife of a local Oromo ruler who lived in Ankober in the 17th century, according to local tradition .

King Sahle Selassie

In the 18th century Ankober, an Oromo settlement , was conquered by the then king of Shewa Qadámi Qal (1720–1745). His successor, Amha Iyasus (1745–1775) moved the capital of the kingdom from Doqaqit to Ankober sometime between 1750 and 1775 and is now considered the city's founder. In the 1750s, he built the first church in the city, the Church of St. Giyorgis . At that time Ankober was an important center with various craftsmen's businesses and was used by caravans as a stopover and the trade routes to the port city of Zeila were controlled from here. King Asfa Wossen , who came to power in 1773/74, expanded the city further, he was buried around 1807 in the Maryam Church in Ankober, which he built. In 1813 Sahle Selassie took over the throne in the Shewa Empire - three more churches were built in the city during his 35-year rule.

In 1839 the missionaries Carl Wilhelm Isenberg and Ludwig Krapf were active in the city, while Isenberg returned to Europe in November 1839, Krapf stayed in the country for another two years. In the 1840s, CT Beke estimated that 2,500 to 3,000 slaves cross Ankober every year. In 1842 the city was destroyed by an earthquake and then rebuilt. William Harris wrote in 1844 of 3,000 slaves at the royal court in Ankober alone and estimated the population of Ankober at that time to be 12-15,000.

Tewodorus II

After King Sahle Selassie's death in 1847, Ankobar was attacked by the Abichu Omoro group , but was also defended thanks to the support of local Omoro groups and the late king's generals. In 1855 Ankober itself and the city's food stores were set on fire by its own ruler, Haile Melekot , who wanted to prevent the city from falling into the hands of Tewodros II . After Melekot's death in November 1855, however, Tewodros marched into Ankober at the end of February 1856, thereby ending the independence of the former Kingdom of Shewa.

From then on Ankober was the seat of Menelik II , who was one of three governors Tewodros under the title of King of Shewa. As a result, Ankobar lost its importance, even if it was still the seat of the Shewa clergy. When Antonio Cecchi visited Ankober in January 1878, he estimated the city's population to be around 6,000, but if a court was held, the population could rise to 15,000. Also in 1878 Menelik moved his headquarters to Intoto , although he continued to frequent Ankobar and in 1883 married his wife Taitu in the church of Medhane Alem . In 1880 Gustavo Bianchi described the Ankober market as unimportant compared to those in Liche and Aliyu Amba . After Menelik was appointed King of Ethiopia in 1889, he had the first local school built in Ankober, and teaching was taken over by Egyptian - Coptic teachers.

From the 1890s onwards, Ankober prison was used for the incarceration of political prisoners during the Menelik campaigns to unify all of Ethiopia. The last king of Kaffa, Gaki Sherocho , as well as King Kennito of Kefa from 1897 to 1902 and from 1902 to 1907 Ras Mengesha Yohannes , son of Yohannes IV , were imprisoned in Ankobar for twelve years from 1897 .

Ankober also had a telegraph office along the Italian telegraph line from Asmara to Addis Ababa , which was built between 1902 and 1904 . At the same time, Ankober, previously an exchange station for traders between camels and donkeys, lost further importance with the opening of the railway line from Djibouti to Dire Dawa in 1906. On December 2, 1907, the Austrian Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Freiherr von Kulmer, who was staying in Aliyu Amba at the time, wrote that Ankober was only used as a state prison. Ruler of Ankobar at that time was Wehni Azaj Welde Sadeq (1838–1909), who was also the head of the state prison. He died in 1909 after having been in power in Ankober for 40 years.

During the First World War , a post office was opened in Ankober; according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, only around 2000 people lived in Ankober at that time. In the run-up to the Battle of Segale , on October 18, 1916, a skirmish broke out in Ankober between the troops of Mikael von Wollo and those of Ras Lul Seged , in which the latter was killed.

In the 1930s, around 3,000 people lived in Ankober again, and in 1956 there were 9,234 inhabitants. The former splendor of the city can still be guessed at the ruins, two kilometers outside the city are the ruins of the former fortification of the Shewa. The Ankober Palace Lodge was built on the ruins of the former Menelik Palace and is modeled on it.

Arts and Culture

Greengrocer at the market in Ankobar

Churches and monasteries

The Church of St. Georgiys is the oldest church in the city. It has a corrugated iron roof that is supported by wooden beams and a colorful facade. The grave of the church founder and city father Amha Iyasus is in a stone house south of the church. From the church you have a nice view to Aliyo Amba.

Not far from St. Georgyis is the new round church Medhane Alem , which was built after the destruction of the old church in the Italian-Ethiopian War (the destroyed foundation walls are still visible today) . Menelik II was enthroned as king in the old church in 1865.

There is also the round church of Maryam , the final resting place of church donors Asfa Wossen and Wosson Sagad. There are large eucalyptus trees around the latter two churches that are said to date from the time of Menelik II.

The St. Michael's Church was founded in 1825 by King Sahle Sellassie and became his final resting place. The white church was built in the style typical of the country and also houses old manuscripts and church artifacts.

The monastery of St. Tekle Haymanot , named after an Ethiopian monk, was originally a wooden structure donated by Shale Selassie in 1839. In 2007 it was rebuilt from stone by the owners of Ankober Palace Lodge. At the entrance there is a large bell from the Paccard bell foundry .

Local museum

There is also a museum that shows, among other things, historical church utensils and Menelik's wedding robe. The museum was established in the 1960 built "Eqabet", a warehouse belonging to Medhane Alem Church. It was realized in cooperation with the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa University and has replaced the protection of Ankober's cultural assets, which was previously organized by the church community itself.

market

The traditional market takes place in Ankobar every Saturday.

traffic

Ankobar is on a gravel road that leads from Debre Berhan to Dulecha . In September 2016, the asphalting of the section from Dulecha to Ankobar began.

From the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa , there is a direct bus to Ankober every day at 5:30 a.m. Several buses run daily from Debre Berhan to Ankober. From there there are connections to the north ( Kombolcha ) and to the south to Addis Ababa.

Personalities

Menelik II, the last king of Shewa

Kings of Shewa in Ankober

The following kings ruled over the Kingdom of Shewa from Ankober until Menelik II moved the seat of the no longer independent kingdom to Intoto in 1878:

Imprisoned rulers in Ankober

Was imprisoned in Ankober: Kawa Tona, the last king of the Wolaytta

The following former rulers of parts of Ethiopia were imprisoned in Ankober by the King of Ethiopia, Menelik II, during his crusade to unite Ethiopia from around 1890:

Web links

Commons : Ankober  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ CSA 2005 National Statistics. (No longer available online.) Central Statistics Agency (Ethiopia) , archived from the original on September 5, 2006 ; Retrieved November 19, 2006 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.statsethiopia.org
  2. ↑ Based on an identification found in Bernhard Lindahl's collection, "Local history in Ethiopia" , The Nordic Africa Institute
  3. ↑ http://www.feg-consulting.com/feg-shared-folder/liu/amhara/woreda-profiles/Ankober.pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.feg-consulting.com  
  4. ↑ Ankober. awura tours, accessed August 30, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Crithagra ankoberensis in the Red List of Threatened Species of the IUCN 2017. Posted by: BirdLife International, 2016-10-01. Retrieved August 30, 2017.
  6. ↑ a b c d e Heiko Hooge: Ethiopia . 4th edition. Iwanowski's Reisebuchverlag , 2017, ISBN 978-3-86197-170-2 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed August 30, 2017]).
  7. ↑ Michael George Gilbert, Sebsebe Demissew: Further notes on the genus Aloe in Ethiopia and Eritrea . In: Kew Bulletin . tape 52 , no. 1 , 1997, p. 146-147 (English).
  8. ↑ Phillip Briggs: Ethopia . Bradt Travel Guides , 2015, p. 288 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed August 30, 2017]).
  9. ↑ Local History of Ethopia: "was eager to improve the town."
  10. ↑ Ankobar . In: TS Baynes (ed.): Encyclopædia Britannica . 9th edition. tape 2 . Charles Scribner's Sons , New York 1878, p. 59 (English, en.wikisource.org [accessed August 30, 2017]).
  11. ↑ Ankober . In: Hugh Chisholm (Ed.): Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 2 . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge 1911, pp. 58 (English, en.wikisource.org [accessed August 30, 2017]).
  12. ↑ a b c Local History of Ethopia. (PDF; 278.19 KB) Nordiska Afrikainstitutet , pp. 18–28 , accessed on August 30, 2017 (English).
  13. ^ Churches surrounding the palace hill. Ankober Palace Lodge, accessed August 30, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Anne-Marie Deisser, Dinah Eastop: Community management of cultural heritage at Ankober, Ethiopia: a partnership in preventive conservation . In: ICOM Committee for Conversation (Ed.): Theory and history in conservation-restoration . tape II , 2008, p. 1029-1034 (English, researchgate.net [accessed August 30, 2017]).
  15. ↑ Ankober-Dulecha Road Construction Launched. In: The Ethiopian Herald . September 11, 2016, accessed August 30, 2017 .
  16. ↑ How to get there. Ankober Palace Lodge, accessed August 30, 2017 .
  17. ↑ a b Historical Backgroupd. Ankober Palace Lodge, accessed August 30, 2017 .