Provinces of Eritrea
In Italian Eritrea, the Italian colonial administration had divided the colony into eight provinces (administrative regions) called Akele Guzay (its capital, Adikeyh), Barka (Agordat), Denkalia (Assab), Hamasien (Asmara), Sahel (Nakfa), Semhar (Massawa), Senhit (Keren) and Serae (Mendefera).
The Tigrinya people of Akele Guzai are mostly followers of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church while the Saho are predominantly majority from Sunni Muslim.
[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.
Hamasien (Ge’ez: ሐማሴን; Tigrinya: ሓማሴን) is a historical province including and surrounding the Eritrean capital named Asmara.
[10] In 1996 the province was divided and distributed amongst the modern Maekel, Debub, Northern Red Sea, Gash-Barka, and Anseba regions.
[citation needed] 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.
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.
With the decline of the importance of the Midri Bahri in the 17th century, 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.
[21] Today the region is home to twelve monasteries of the Eritrean Orthodox Church as well as a number of new factories in the town of Mendefera.
[25] Historically Serae includes Tigray proper (Adwa/Shire/Axum) and was home of the Aksumite capital of Axum town and it was bounded by lands of Akele Guzay in the east, Hamassien in the North, it borders Temben, Endrta and Wolkayt to 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.
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'.
