Mareb River
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The Mareb River (or Gash River), is a river flowing out of northern Ethiopia (near Adigrat and Tserona) which partly forms a natural frontier between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
According to the Statistical Abstract of Ethiopia for 1967/68, the Mereb River is 440 kilometers long. Its headwaters rise north of Amba Takara in central Eritrea, on the landward side of the eastern escarpment within 80 km of Annesley Bay on the Red Sea. It flows south, bordering Ethiopia, then west through western Eritrea to reach the Sudanese plains near Kassala. Unlike the Setit or Takazze rivers, which flow out of Ethiopia and also forms a natural border with Eritrea, the waters of the Mareb do not reach the Nile but dissipate in the sands of the eastern Sudanese plains.
The Mareb is dry for much of the year, but like the Takazze is subject to sudden floods during the rainy season; only the left bank of the upper course of the Mareb is in Ethiopian territory. Its main tributaries are the Obel River on the right bank (in Eritrea) and the Sarana, Balasa and 'Engweya Rivers on the left (Ethiopia).
The Mareb was important historically as the boundary between two separately governed regions in the area: the land of the Bahr negash (Tigrinya "kingdom of the sea", also known as Medri Bahri or "land of/by the sea") to the north of the river, and the Tigray to the south. The territories under the Bahr negash extended as far north as the Red Sea coast, and as far south (and west) as Shire[1] and the capital was at Debarwa in modern Eritrea, about 20 miles south of Asmara.
The river's Eritrean floodpain was the location of a 2001 sighting of a sizable elephant herd, the first such sighting in Eritrea since 1955.[2]
