Dekemhare

Dekemhare is a highland town in Eritrea's Southern Region, southeast of Asmara, in the old province of Akele Guzai. The settlement of Dequ-Mehari, now perched above the town, was founded in the fifteenth century as a small agricultural community. It was overshadowed by the nearby settlement of Gura, which gave its name to the valley.

The surrounding highlands were farmed by Tigrinya-speaking villagers and dotted with churches and monasteries. Not far to the north, near Nefasit, the monastery of Debre Bizen was founded in the 1350s by Filipos on top of a mountain rising to about 2,460 metres, and its library came to hold many Ge'ez manuscripts. A charter of the emperor Zara Yaqob granted lands to the monastery, and in the sixteenth century Ottoman campaigns to establish their province of Habesh damaged it and several other habitations of the region.