Hamasien

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Hamasien was also the name of the province including and surrounding Asmara, now part of modern Eritrea. The region has been divided and distributed amongst the modern Maekel, Debub, Northern Red Sea and Anseba regions.

Hamasien's population are predominantly followers of Oriental Orthodox Christianity and members of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church with a considerable minority of Sunni Muslim, Roman Catholic and Lutheran communities. Traditionally being the center of the Kebessa (i.e. the Eritrean Highlands), it was the locality of the old palace town of Debarwa (the capital of Bahr negus Yeshaq). It was later placed in the province of Seraye.

[edit] History

The former province was the political and economic center of Eritrea, and judging from excavations in the Sembel area outside Asmara it has been so since at least 800 BC. The earliest surviving appearance of the name "Hamasien" is believed to have been the region ḤMS²M, i.e. ḤMŠ, mentioned in a Sabaic inscription of the Axumite king Ezana.^[1]^[2] The region may have been mentioned as early as Puntite times by Ancient Egyptian records as 'MSW (i.e. "Amasu"), a region of Punt.^[2]

During medieval times, it was largely part of the kingdom of Medri Bahri, ruled by the Bahr negus and governed from Debarwa. "There was no administration that connected Hamasin and Serai to the centre of the Ethiopian Kingdom. Indeed, there was little sense in which the Bahr Negash could be said to "control" the area.^[3] With the decline of the importance of the Bahr negus, the lands north of the Mareb River were granted to Hab Sellus and his descendants became an important local dynasty.^[4] Prior to its grant by Ethiopian Emperor Yohannes IV to Ras Alula, the province enjoyed independence and appeared in European maps as 'The Republic of Hamasien'.^{[citation needed]}

Following the death of Emperor Yohannes at the Battle of Gallabat, Hamasien was occupied by the Italians, who incorporated it into their colony of Eritrea.^[5]

[edit] See also

Provinces of Eritrea

[edit] Notes

^ Richard Pankhurst, The Ethiopian Borderlands (Lawrenceville: Red Sea Press, 1997), p. 21.
^ ^a ^b "Ḥamasen," in Siegbert von Uhlig, ed., Encyclopaedia Aethiopica: D-Ha (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005).
^ (1984) "Proceedings of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal of the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples". Session on Eritrea, Rome, Italy: Research and Information Centre on Eritrea.
^ Pankhurst, Ethiopian Borderlands, pp. 401f
^ Haggai Erlich, Ras Alula and the Scramble for Africa (Lawrenceville: Red Sea Press, 1996), chapters 11-13.