Wehni

The mountain was abandoned as a prison during the Zemene Mesafint; more precisely in the 1790s, as Samuel Gobat learned from one Tekla Selassie, "a relative of the king" (that is, the Emperor of Ethiopia).

[1] Although James Bruce first mentions the existence of the royal prison at Wehni, Thomas Pakenham was the first European to visit the site, in 1955.

He notes that when he started to search for this half-forgotten complex, there were three possible locations for the prison in the province of Begemder, now part of the Amhara Region of Ethiopia: the Ethiopian expert Steven Wright believed it lay three days' journey to the west of Gondar; a Colonel Shifferaw, who was familiar with the area, knew of two locations to the east of Gondar.

He concludes his account of travels in Ethiopia with a description of the compound at the top of the mountain, viewed from the air, after he had convinced the pilot of the Gondar-Addis Ababa flight to pass by and circle the peak.

This royal prison at the top of Wehni left its influence on English literature by the accounts of Bruce and inspired the setting of Dr. Samuel Johnson's narrative The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia.