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Ankober
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ankober (also called Gorobela[1]) is a town of Ethiopia and one of the capitals of the former kingdom of Shewa. Located in the Semien Shewa Zone of the Amhara Region, Ankober is perched on the eastern escarpment of the Ethiopian Highlands 40 kilometers to the east of Debre Birhan, with a latitude and longitude of , and an approximate elevation of about 8,500 feet.
Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia published in 2005, Ankober has an estimated population of 1114 males and 1174 females for a total population of 2288.[2] Despite its status as a former capital, Ankober is the second-largest town in Ankober woreda.
Buildings that survive from the Shewa period include the Kidus Mikael church, built by Sahle Selassie. Ankober is also known as where the endemic Ankober Serin was first observed by ornithologists in 1979.
By the reign of Meridazmach Amha Iyasus, Ankober had become the capital of Shewa, and remained the capital until (later Emperor) Menelik II moved it to Mount Entoto in 1878. According to Philip Briggs, all that survives of Menelik's palace, which he had built on the site of his father's palace, is "one long stone-and-mortar wall measuring some 1.5m high." Briggs comments that it is "difficult to say why this one wall should have survived virtually intact when the rest of the palace crumbled into virtual oblivion."[3]
Menelek II afterwards used Ankober to confine his political prisoners. People he had confined there included Gaki Sherocho, the last king of Kaffa, and Ras Mengesha Yohannes, the rebellious son of Emperor Yohannes IV.
- ^ Based on an identification found in the collection of Bernhard Lindahl, "Local history in Ethiopia", The Nordic Africa Institute
- ^ CSA 2005 National Statistics, Table B.4.
- ^ Philip Briggs, Ethiopia: The Bradt Travel Guide, 3rd edition (Chalfont St Peters: Bradt, 2002), p. 315.
