Debre Marqos
Debre Marqos (also called
Mankorar) is a city and
woreda in east-central
Ethiopia. Located in the
Misraq Gojjam Zone of the
Amhara Region, it has a latitude and longitude of , and an elevation of 2446 meters. The city is called Debre Marqos after its principal church, constructed in the late 19th century and dedicated to St. Mark.
Based on figures from the
Central Statistical Agency in 2005, Debre Marqos has an estimated total population of 85,597, of whom 43,229 were males and 42,368 were females.
[CSA 2005 National Statistics, Table B.4] According to the 1994 national census this city had a population of 49,297.
Debre Marqos is served by an
airport (
ICAO code HADM,
IATA DBM) with an unpaved runway.
Debre Marqos was the capital of
Tekle Haymanot,
Negus of
Gojjam during his reign and as a result, Pankhurst notes, the population of Debre Marqos "fluctuated greatly with the presence of absence of the army" of the Negus. He states that when the Negus resided in the town, it had between 20,000 and 40,000 inhabitants; in his absence, between 5,000 and 6,000.
[Richard P.K. Pankhurst, An Economic History of Ethiopia, 1800-1935 (Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University Press, 1968), p. 694.] A major
Italian fortification was located in the city during the existence of
Italian East Africa, and captured by the British
Gideon Force and Ethiopian
Arbenyotch (or Resistance Fighters)
3 April,
1941. Until the reorganization of the provinces that followed the adoption of the 1995 constitution, this city served as the capital of the province of Gojjam.
