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Senafe

ሰንዓፈ
صنعفى
Senafe ሰንዓፈ; صنعفى
	Senafe Location in Eritrea
	Coordinates: 14°42′N 39°25′E / 14.700°N 39.417°E
Country	Eritrea
Region	Debub. جنوب
District	Senafe District
Elevation	2,446 m (8,025 ft)
Population
• Total	45,000[citation needed]
Climate	BSk

Senafe (Arabic: صنعفى, Tigrinya: ሰንዓፈ) is a market town in southern Eritrea, on the edge of the Eritrean highlands ሶይራ. The surrounding area is inhabited by the Saho people and the Tigrinya people, its well known by its cultural and religious historical background.

Senafe is known for the ruins of Metera (also known as Balaw Kalaw), Qohayto to the south, and for Kaskase to the north. The soil is derived from volcanic ignimbrite,^[1] and Senafe sits on the southeastern edge of a twenty kilometer wide caldera.

History

An early record of Sanafe is on the Egyptus Novello map, published in 1454. This map shows Sanafe at the edge of Tigray, connected to two routes, one leading west to Axum, the other south to Lake Ashangi.^[2] According to James Bruce, the party of Jesuits which included the Catholic patriarch Afonso Mendes and Fr. Jerónimo Lobo, passed through Senafe in 1625, having entered the Horn of Africa by way of Beilul and having crossed the Danikil Desert.^[3]

Senafe is mentioned in a 1794–95 land grant (1787 E.C.) from the Ethiopian Emperor Tekle Giyorgis to Ras Wolde Selassie.^[4]

During his reconnaissance work for the 1868 British Expedition to Abyssinia (expedition against Emperor Tewodros II), Clements Markham visited Senafe, finding it situated "at the foot of the grand mass of sandstone rock about half a mile north-west of the camp, called Amba-Adana." The town itself consisted "of about a dozen houses built of rough stones and mud, with flat roofs branches being placed in rows across the beams, and covered with mud. Broken jars plastered into the roof, serve as chimneys." He estimated the population to be around 240 inhabitants.^[5]^[6]

During Italian rule, the town grew notably. The modern town suffered extensive destruction during the Eritrean War of Independence and the Eritrean–Ethiopian War.^[7]

Climate

The prevailing climate in Senafe is known as a semi-arid climate; more precisely it lies on the border between a cool semi-arid climate (Köppen BSk) and a hot semi-arid climate (BSh).

Climate data for Senafe
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Mean daily maximum °C (°F)	24.0 (75.2)	25.2 (77.4)	26.5 (79.7)	26.7 (80.1)	27.1 (80.8)	26.7 (80.1)	22.3 (72.1)	22.7 (72.9)	25.2 (77.4)	24.6 (76.3)	23.5 (74.3)	23.1 (73.6)	24.8 (76.7)
Mean daily minimum °C (°F)	7.6 (45.7)	8.6 (47.5)	10.3 (50.5)	11.4 (52.5)	11.9 (53.4)	11.5 (52.7)	11.2 (52.2)	11.9 (53.4)	10.4 (50.7)	9.5 (49.1)	8.3 (46.9)	7.0 (44.6)	10.0 (49.9)
Average rainfall mm (inches)	4 (0.2)	7 (0.3)	25 (1.0)	59 (2.3)	41 (1.6)	31 (1.2)	158 (6.2)	135 (5.3)	21 (0.8)	10 (0.4)	20 (0.8)	4 (0.2)	515 (20.3)
Source: Climate-Data.org, altitude: 2,446 metres or 8,025 feet^[8]

Notes and references

^ Zanettin, Bruno; Bellieni, Giuliano; Visentin, Eleonora Justin (2006). "Stratigraphy and evolution of the trachy-rhyolitic volcanism of the Senafe area (Eastern Eritrean Plateau)". Journal of African Earth Sciences. 45 (4/5): 478–488. doi:10.1016/j.jafrearsci.2006.04.004.
^ Richard Pankhurst, The Ethiopian Borderlands (Larenceville: Red Sea, 1997), p. 92
^ Bruce, ''Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (1805 edition), vol. 3, p. 362
^ Richard Pankhurst, History of Ethiopian Towns: From the Middle Ages to the Early Nineteenth Century (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982), vol. 1 p. 231.
^ C. R. Markham, "Geographical Results of the Abyssinian Expedition", Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 38 (1868), p. 21
^ Pankhurst, Richard (1982). History of Ethiopian towns from the mid 19th century to 1935. Steiner. p. 116.
^ Okubaghergis, Biyan Ghebreyesus. (2020) "The Impact of the Eritrean-Ethiopian Border on the Borderland Communities (2000-2018): A case Study of Senafe and Tserona." PHD thesis, University of Cagliari. Requires subscription.
^ "Climate: Senafe - Climate graph, Temperature graph, Climate table". Climate-Data.org. Retrieved 25 September 2014.