Samre is a town in northern Ethiopia. Located in the
Debub Misraqawi (south-eastern) Zone of the
Tigray Region, this town has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation of 1855 meters above sea level. It is one of two towns in
Saharti Samre woreda.
History
The ''Royal Chronicle'' of Emperor
Yohannes I mentions Samre as one of the settlements involved in the 1677 revolt of Fares and Zamaryam. The town is mentioned again in an inquiry conducted by Emperor
Iyasu I in 1698, in which he proclaimed that tolls should no longer be collected there.
When
Charles Beke
Charles Tilstone Beke (10 October 1800 – 31 July 1874) was an English traveller, geographer and Biblical critic.
Biography
Born in Stepney, London, the son of a merchant in the City of London, for a few years Beke engaged in mercantile pursuit ...
left Ethiopia, his path took him through Samre (April 1843). He wrote that it was the residence of the governor of "Salowa", and the location of "the salt-market of Tigre, in direct correspondence with
Sókota in
Lasta". When
Augustus B. Wylde passed through Samre in the late 1890s, the town had declined since the death of its resident lord, one
Ras Hailu. The late Ras's palace, one of the largest structures Wylde had seen in Ethiopia, was reduced to ruins, and its market, which had been so busy to require daily sessions, now met once a week on Saturdays.
During the
Ethiopian Civil War, units of the
Tigray People's Liberation Front held Samre from 20 June through 22 1988 against the
Ethiopian 16th Division in a delaying action against the government's
Operation Adwa.
Demographics
Based on figures from the
Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Samre has an estimated total population of 3,712 of whom 1,748 are men and 1,964 are women.
CSA 2005 National Statistics
Table B.4 The 1994 census reported it had a total population of 2,138 of whom 931 were men and 1,207 were women.
Notes
Populated places in the Tigray Region
{{Tigray-geo-stub