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Gondar or Gonder ((アムハラ語:ጎንደር), ''Gonder''〔Based on the BGN/PCGN romanization of Amharic.〕 or ''Gondär'';〔Based on the EAE romanization of Amharic.〕 formerly , ''Gʷandar'' or ''Gʷender'') is a city and separate woreda in Ethiopia. Located in the Semien Gondar Zone of the Amhara Region, Gondar is north of Tana Lake on the Lesser Angereb River and southwest of the Simien Mountains. It has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation of 2133 meters above sea level. It is surrounded by the Gondar Zuria woreda. Gondar previously served as the capital of both the Ethiopian Empire and the subsequent Begemder Province. The city holds the remains of several royal castles, including those in Fasil Ghebbi (the Royal Enclosure), for which Gondar has been called the "Camelot of Africa".〔http://bjtoursandtrekking.com/tours/index.htm Gondar World Heritage Site〕 ==History== Until the 16th century, the Solomonic Emperors of Ethiopia usually had no fixed capital town, instead living in tents in temporary royal camps as they moved around their realms while their family, bodyguard and retinue devoured surplus crops and cut down nearby trees for firewood. One exception to this rule was Debre Berhan, founded by Zara Yaqob in 1456; Tegulet in Shewa was also essentially the capital during the first century of Solomonic rule. Beginning with Emperor Menas in 1559, the rulers of Ethiopia began spending the rainy season near Lake Tana, often returning to the same location each year. These encampments, which flourished as cities for a short time, include Emfraz, Ayba, Gorgora, and Dankaz. Gondar was founded by Emperor Fasilides around the year 1635, and grew as an agricultural and market town. There was a superstition at the time that the capital's name should begin with the letter 'Gʷa' (modern pronunciation 'Gʷe'; Gonder was originally spelt Gʷandar), which also contributed to Gorgora's (founded as Gʷargʷara) growth in the centuries after 1600. Tradition also states that a buffalo led the Emperor Fasilides to a pool beside the Angereb, where an "old and venerable hermit" told the Emperor he would locate his capital there. Fasilides had the pool filled in and built his castle on that same site.〔Richard K.P. Pankhurst, ''History of Ethiopian Towns: From the Middle Ages to the Early Nineteenth Century'' (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1982), vol. 1 p. 117.〕 The emperor also built a total of seven churches; the first two, Fit Mikael and Fit Abbo, were built to end local epidemics. The five emperors who followed him also built their palaces in the town. In 1668, as a result of a church council, the Emperor Yohannes I ruled that the inhabitants of Gondar are to be segregated by religion. This caused the Muslims to move into their own quarter, ''Islamge'' ((アムハラ語:እስላምጌ), "Islam place," or "Islam country") or ''Islam Bet'' (እስላም ቤት "House of Islam," lit. "Islam house"), within two years. This quarter came to be known as Addis Alem (Amharic for "New World").〔Solomon Getamun, ''History of the City of Gondar'' (Africa World Press, 2005), p. 16〕 During the seventeenth century, the city's population is estimated to have exceeded 60,000. Many of the buildings from this period survive, despite the turmoil of the eighteenth century. By the reign of Iyasu the Great, Gondar had acquired a sense of community identity; when the Emperor called upon the inhabitants to decamp and follow him on his campaign against the Oromo in Damot and Gojjam, as had the court and subjects of earlier emperors, they refused.〔Getamun, ''City of Gondar'', p. 5〕 Although Gondar was by any definition a city, it was not a melting pot of diverse traditions, nor Ethiopia's window to the larger world, according to Donald Levine. "It served rather as an agent for the quickened development of the Amhara's own culture. And thus it became a focus of national pride... not as a hotbed of alien custom and immorality, as they often regard Addis Ababa today, but as the most perfect embodiment of their traditional values."〔Donald N. Levine, ''Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopia Culture'' (Chicago: University Press, 1972), p. 42〕 As Levine elaborates in a footnote, it was an orthogenetic pattern of development, as distinguished from an heterogenetic one.〔Levine, ''Wax and Gold'', p. 42 n. 42〕 The town served as Ethiopia's capital until Tewodros II moved the Imperial capital to Magadala upon being crowned Emperor in 1855; the city was plundered and burnt in 1864, then devastated again in December, 1866.〔Sven Rubenson, ''King of Kings: Tewodros of Ethiopia'' (Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University, 1966), pp.71f〕 Abdallahi ibn Muhammad sacked Gondar when he invaded Ethiopia June 1887. Gondar was ravaged again in 23 January in the next year, when the Sudanese invaders set fire to almost every one of the city's churches.〔("Local History in Ethiopia" ) (pdf) The Nordic Africa Institute website (accessed 9 May 2008)〕 After the conquest of Ethiopia by the Kingdom of Italy in 1936, Gondar was further developed under Italian occupation.〔Getamun, ''City of Gondar'', pp. 28-37〕 During the Second World War, Italian forces made their last stand in Gondar in November 1941, after Addis Ababa fell to British forces six months before. The area of Gondar was one of the main centers of activity of Italian guerrilla against the British forces until summer 1943.〔Getamun, ''City of Gondar'', pp. 55-60〕 During the Ethiopian Civil War, the forces of the Ethiopian Democratic Union gained control of large parts of Begemder, and during parts of 1977 operated within a few miles of Gondar, and appeared to be at the point of capturing the city.〔Marina and David Ottaway, ''Ethiopia: Empire in Revolution'' (New York: Africana, 1978), p. 171〕 As part of Operation Tewodros near the end of the Civil War, Gondar was captured by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front in March 1991.〔Paul B. Henze, ''Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia'' (New York: Palgrave, 2000), p. 322〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gondar」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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