Provinces of Eritrea

Akele Guzai is one of the most ancient regions of Eritrea. It has an inscriptional record going back to at least the 9th century BC, the earliest example of the Ge'ez script. The province was part of Dʿmt,[1] which would evolve into the Kingdom of Aksum.[2]

Akele Guzai's name has been connected to the Gaze of the Monumentum Adulitanum (which later medieval Greek notes in the margins associate with the Aksumite people[3]).[4] If the note regarding the Gaze is accurate, it would connect the name of Akele Guzai to the Agʿazyān or Agʿazi (Ge'ez speakers) of the Kingdom of Dʿmt in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. This connection has been rejected by linguists in modern times, however, due to the lack of the middle voiced pharyngeal fricative in the triliteral roots, which is usually preserved in Tigrinya.[5]

Along with Agame in Ethiopia, it was a main center of Aksumite culture (second only to Western Tigray, where the capital was located), with a distinct sub-culture that separated the two regions from that of Western Tigray (Shire, Axum, Yeha), Central Eritrea (Serae, Hamasien, and Adulis), and frontier areas in northern Eritrea and Central Ethiopia.[6][7]

In the Middle Ages, parts of southern Akele Guzai were briefly part of the larger province of Bur, Ethiopia, which also included Agame, some northeastern Afar lowlands, and the Buri Peninsula; southern Akele Guzai and Agame were part of "Upper" (La'ilay) Bur, while the lowlands were further distinguished as "Lower" (Tahtay).[8]

The former province Hamassien was the political and economic center of Eritrea; judging from excavations in the Sembel area outside Asmara, it has been so since at least the 9th century 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.[11][12] The region may have been mentioned as early as Puntite times by Ancient Egyptian records as 'MSW (i.e. "Amasu"), a region of Punt.[12]

During the early medieval centuries, it was ruled by the Raesis of the Hazega and Tseazega and the Bahri negasi making their center of administration in Debarwa. According to Francisco Álvares, writing in the early 16th century, the Raesi of the Tseazegas (Habtesulus) had been able to collect tax by extending their authority almost as far as Suakin in modern Sudan.

Hamsien appears on indigenous maps of the northern Horn of Africa in the 15th century.[13][14] It was governed by a chief called Zarsanāy in the sixteenth century.[15]

Despite the Emperor of Ethiopia's grants of control of the country of the Bahri negesitat during the Zagwe and Solomonic dynasties, the 1984 "Proceedings of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal of the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples" would claom that "There was no administration that connected Hamassien and Serae to the centre of the Ethiopian Kingdom[16] With the decline of the importance of the Midri Bahri in the 17th to 19th centuries, the province enjoyed a period of communal rule under councils of village elders, the so-called shimagile who enforced traditional laws which had prevailed uniquely in the region alongside feudal authority since ancient times.[17] The region appeared in European maps as 'The Republic of Hamasien'. 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 and making one of its villages, Asmara, the capital of the colony, a status it retains today as the capital of the sovereign country of Eritrea.[18]

Serae/Seraye which in old books called as Sarawi (ሰራዊ)[24][25] is an ancient entity which was a region of the Kingdom of D'mt,[26] which would evolve in the Kingdom of Aksum and later the center of the kingdom of Medri Bahri centered in Debarwa with its leaders Bahri Negasi.[27] Serae was bound by regions of Akele Guzay in the east, Hamassien in the North, Tigray proper (Adwa/Shire/Axum) in the south and Gash-Setit in the west During this Axumite period, the region became a successful trading region as it lay between the Red Sea port of Adulis, Asmara, and Axum.

In his tablet, Ezana mentions several peoples he had subjugated and refers to himself as the ruler of Aksum, Himyar, Sheba (Saba') and Rydan in Yemen. He also mentions 'Sarawi' as one of the people he subjugated. Furthermore, he mention that he subjugated the king of 'Sarati', (this name crops up in different forms of one of which is Sarawi. It stands for the Eritrean province of 'Serae'), and says that he came to an understanding with him concerning the passage of trade caravans to 'Adulis' peacefully across his country. However, the names of these kingdoms disappeared after the fourth century A.D. Following the fall of Aksum as a united kingdom after the Hamiti Beja tribes overran the Eritrean highlands in the 8th century A.D., the province serae formed an independent state under the administration of its ruler who was called 'Cantibai'.[28] Some scholars wrote that the name Serae origin comes from the Sarat or Sarawat Mountains in South Arabia.[29]

Serae appears on indigenous maps of the northern Horn of Africa in the 15th century.[30][31]

Bahri Negasi existed until the 1600s. The province had its own written native administration codes that was used from the beginning of the 1400AD, which was named as the law of Adkeme-Miligae. The book existed until the come of the anti Christian jihadist Ahmad Gragn in the 1600s, burning churches and killing the believers and progressing northwards from present-day eastern Ethiopia or around Somalia, and the book was lost/burnt at that time. The people of Serae were administered without the book verbally until the arrival of the Italians in the end of the 19th century. In 1938 again the book of native law code was written of elderly and knowledgeable people from seven villages (Adi Mongonti, Mayduma, Kudo Felasi, Bet Gabriel, Qine Hayela, Adi Hyis, and May Leham) representing the whole awraja Serae except the Logo Tchiwa which had its own codes in addition to the Adkeme-Miligae. This Law had more liberal customs and low restrictions on women's rights for land ownership than any other laws in the country.[32]

Despite the emperor of Ethiopia's allegations and grants of control of the country of the Bahri negesitat the Zagwe and Solomonic dynasties, the 1984 Proceedings of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal of the International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples declares that "There was no administration that connected Serae and Hamassien to the centre of the Ethiopian Kingdom.[16] Most of Serae and Akeleguzay are together now inside the Southern region of Eritrea.