Senafe

---

title: "Senafe" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["southern-region-(eritrea)", "populated-places-in-eritrea"] description: "Town in Debub, Eritrea" topic_path: "general/southern-region-eritrea" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senafe" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Town in Debub, Eritrea ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox settlement"]

Field	Value
official_name	Senafe or Sanafe
native_name	Hakir, Sancafe
pushpin_map	Eritrea
pushpin_label_position	bottom
pushpin_mapsize	300
pushpin_map_caption	Location in Eritrea
subdivision_type	Country
subdivision_type1	Region
subdivision_name	[[Image:Flag of Eritrea.svg
subdivision_name1	Debub
subdivision_type2	District
subdivision_name2	Senafe District
established_title	Hakir
coordinates
elevation_m	2446
blank_name	Climate
blank_info	BSk
::

| name = | official_name = Senafe or Sanafe | native_name = Hakir, Sancafe | native_name_lang = | image_skyline = | image_caption = | image_flag = | image_seal = | image_map = | map_caption = | pushpin_map = Eritrea | pushpin_label_position = bottom | pushpin_mapsize = 300 | pushpin_map_caption = Location in Eritrea | subdivision_type = Country | subdivision_type1 = Region | subdivision_name = [[Image:Flag of Eritrea.svg|25px]] Eritrea | subdivision_name1 = Debub | subdivision_type2 = District | subdivision_name2 = Senafe District | established_title = Hakir | established_date = | government_type = | leader_title = | leader_name = | area_magnitude = | area_total_sq_mi = | area_total_km2 = | area_land_sq_mi = | area_land_km2 = | area_urban_sq_mi = | area_urban_km2 = | area_metro_km2 = | area_metro_sq_mi = | population_as_of = | population_footnotes = | population_total = | population_urban = | population_metro = | population_density_sq_mi = | population_density_km2 = | timezone = | utc_offset = | timezone_DST = | utc_offset_DST = | coordinates = | elevation_footnotes = | elevation_m = 2446 | elevation_ft = | postal_code_type = | postal_code = | area_code = | blank_name = Climate | blank_info = BSk | website = | footnotes =

Senafe (, ) is a market town in southern Eritrea, on the edge of the Eritrean Highlands ሶይራ. The name Sanafe driven from [Sana-feen] yemeni words.The surrounding area is inhabited by the Saho people and the Tigrinya people. It's well known for its cultural and religious historical background, as well as for the ruins of Metera (also known as Balaw Kalaw), Qohayto to the south, and Kaskase to the north.

The soil in the is derived from volcanic ignimbrite, 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. 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.

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

During his reconnaissance work for the 1868 British Expedition to Abyssinia, 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.

During Italian rule, the town grew notably. The modern town suffered extensive destruction during the Eritrean–Ethiopian War.

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). |metric first = yes |single line = yes |temperature colour = pastel |Jan high C = 24.0 |Feb high C = 25.2 |Mar high C = 26.5 |Apr high C = 26.7 |May high C = 27.1 |Jun high C = 26.7 |Jul high C = 22.3 |Aug high C = 22.7 |Sep high C = 25.2 |Oct high C = 24.6 |Nov high C = 23.5 |Dec high C = 23.1 |Jan low C = 7.6 |Feb low C = 8.6 |Mar low C = 10.3 |Apr low C = 11.4 |May low C = 11.9 |Jun low C = 11.5 |Jul low C = 11.2 |Aug low C = 11.9 |Sep low C = 10.4 |Oct low C = 9.5 |Nov low C = 8.3 |Dec low C = 7.0 |Jan rain mm = 4 |Feb rain mm = 7 |Mar rain mm = 25 |Apr rain mm = 59 |May rain mm = 41 |Jun rain mm = 31 |Jul rain mm = 158 |Aug rain mm = 135 |Sep rain mm = 21 |Oct rain mm = 10 |Nov rain mm = 20 |Dec rain mm = 4 |rain colour = green |source 1 = Climate-Data.org, altitude: 2446 m

References

1. (2006). "Stratigraphy and evolution of the trachy-rhyolitic volcanism of the Senafe area (Eastern Eritrean Plateau)". Journal of African Earth Sciences.
2. [[Richard Pankhurst (academic). Richard Pankhurst]], ''The Ethiopian Borderlands'' (Larenceville: Red Sea, 1997), p. 92
3. Bruce, ''''Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile'' (1805 edition), vol. 3, p. 362
4. Richard Pankhurst, ''History of Ethiopian Towns: From the Middle Ages to the Early Nineteenth Century'' (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982), vol. 1 p. 231.
5. C. R. Markham, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1798567 "Geographical Results of the Abyssinian Expedition", ''Journal of the Royal Geographical Society''], 38 (1868), p. 21
6. Pankhurst, Richard. (1982). "History of Ethiopian towns from the mid 19th century to 1935". Steiner.
7. Okubaghergis, Biyan Ghebreyesus. (2020) [https://iris.unica.it/retrieve/handle/11584/284417/383825/PHD%20thesis%201.pdf "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.
8. "Climate: Senafe - Climate graph, Temperature graph, Climate table". Climate-Data.org.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::