Adwa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The landscape of Adwa

'This article is about the town. For the volcano, see Adwa (volcano).

Adwa (also spelled Adowa, Aduwa, or Adua) is a market town in northern Ethiopia, and best known as the community closest to the decisive Battle of Adowa fought in 1896. Located in the Mehakelegnaw Zone of the Tigray Region, Adwa has a longitude and latitude of 14°10′N, 38°54′E.

Based on figures from the Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Adwa has an estimated total population of 42,672, of whom 20,774 were males and were 21,898 females.^[1] According to the census of 1994, the town had a population of 24,519.

Adwa is home to several notable churches, while Abba Garima Monastery, founded in the sixth century and known for its tenth century gospels, lies nearby.

1 History
2 Films
3 See also
4 Notes

[edit] History

According to Richard Pankhurst, Adwa derives its name from Adi Awa (or Wa), "Village of the Awa"; the Awa are an ethnic group mentioned in the anonymous Monumentum Adulitanum that once stood at Adulis.^[2]

Despite this claim of antiquity, Adwa only acquired major importance following the establishment of a permanent capital at Gondar. As the traveller James Bruce noted, Adwa was situated on a piece of "flat ground through which every body must go in their way from Gondar to the Red Sea."^[3] By 1700, it had become the residence for the governor of Tigray province, and grew to overshadow Debarwa, the traditional seat of the Bahr negus, as the most important town in northern Ethiopia. Adwa was one of the favored seats of Emperor Yohannes IV in the late 19th Century, although he later preferred Mekele which replaced Adwa as the regional seat of government in Tigray.

Its geographical importance also led to Adwa's greatest claim to fame, being the site of the final battle of the First Italo–Ethiopian War, where Emperor Menelik II fought to defend Ethiopia's independence against Italy. Menelik led the Ethiopian Army to a decisive victory against the Italians, which ensured an independent Ethiopia until the Italians invaded again on the eve of the Second World War.

A frequent target of attacks by the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) during the Ethiopian Civil War, Adwa permanently passed into their control in March 1988. Adwa and it's evirons are the native district of many of the core leaders of the TPLF which lead Ethiopia today, and the district is represented in Parliament by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi himself.

[edit] Films

Adwa (1999). Directed by Haile Gerima.

[edit] See also

Battle of Adowa

[edit] Notes

^ CSA 2005 National Statistics, Table B.3
^ Richard R.K. Pankhurst, History of Ethiopian Towns: From the Middle Ages to the Early Nineteenth Century (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982), p. 192.
^ Pankhurst, Ethiopian Towns, p. 194.