Travel Guide Negash

Today, Negash is a town of 10,000 inhabitants located between Wikro and Sinkata. Its history is intertwined with that of the birth of Islam. In 615, a hundred or so Muslims, persecuted by the Arab Quraysh tribe which then dominated Mecca, went into exile in Abyssinia on the orders of the Prophet Mohammed, in what is known as the first Hijra. Among them, two future wives and a daughter of the Prophet found a benevolent refuge under the protection of the king of Ethiopia, Ashama ibn Abjar, the negus(negasi in Tigrayan or najashi in Arabic, from which the name of the place derives), the king of Abyssinia who reigned from Aksum over his kingdom now straddling Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. Many of his disciples who died in Ethiopia are buried here, as is the Abyssinian ruler himself, who, according to Muslim legend, converted to Islam under the name of Seid Ahmed al-Najashi. He ruled the kingdom of Abyssinia until 631. A 7th-century cemetery has been excavated here. The imposing tomb of the ruler, that of the first followers of the Prophet Mohammed (some fifteen tombs) and the mosque built in 615 (the second after that of the Companions in Eritrea by exiles from the Prophet's family) are the three Negash monuments that attract thousands of pilgrims every year, who consider the city to be the "second Mecca". But the mosque, which was renovated in 2018 thanks to Turkish funding, suffered more than its fair share of damage during the war in Tigray in 2020: the minaret was destroyed and the facade collapsed.