Ethiopian Monasteries

Debre Damo monastery

Debre Damo is the name of a flat-topped mountain, or amba, and a 6th century monastery in northern Ethiopia. The mountain is steeply rising plateau of trapezoidal shape, about 1000 by 400 meters in dimension, having an elevation of 2216 meters above sea level, and located west of Adigrat in the Zone of the Tigray Region. The monastery, accessible only by rope up a sheer cliff, is known for its collection of manuscripts, and having the earliest existing church building in Ethiopia still in its original style. The Debre Damo monastery, which dates back to early Aksumite times, is said to possess the Ethiopia’s oldest existing church. Legend has it that Abba Aragawi, one of the ‘Nine Saints’, while wandering at the foot of the cliff, judged that the plateau above him was a suitable place to live a solitary life. God, hearing his wish, commanded a snake living on the mountain-top to stretch down and lift up the holy man, who made Debre Damo his abode. The visitor, lacking the kind snake that helped the monastery’s founder to ascend the mountain, has to go up using a rope lowered by the friendly monks. The summit, when eventually conquered 24 meters (78 feet) later, offers panoramic views and complete seclusion and peace for the 600 or so monks and deacons who live there.

The beams and ceiling of the ancient Debre Damo church – around which the monastery is built – are beautifully decorated with carved wooden panels depicting lion, elephant, rhinoceros, snakes, gazelle, antelope, giraffe, and camels. A large number of paintings are preserved there, including several depicting Abba Aragawi’s legendary foundation of Debre Damo. The treasures secreted within – kept intact through the monastery’s 1,400 tumultuous years of history because of that arduous, dangerous ascent – include an extensive collection of illuminated manuscripts, among them the oldest surviving text fragments anywhere in Ethiopia. The church now houses about fifty manuscripts, although the monks claim they once possessed no less than a thousand. After fourteen centuries, the monastery of Dabre Damo has experience little change. Rare visitors are usually led to the home of the high priest paying respect and fee, and then they would be escorted to appreciate the interior of the monastery and surrounding area, which boasts a spectacular panoramic view of the Tigray Highland. Today, there are about 600 monks and priest live in the 150 stone houses on the mountain top. Their life is almost entirely self-sufficient, with cisterns collecting rain water, home grown crops and livestock.

Hayk Estifanos Monastery

Lake Hayq or Lake Haik is a freshwater lake of Ethiopia. It is located north of Dessie, in the Debub Wollo Zone of the Amhara Region. The town of Hayq is to the west of the lake.

According to a local legend, the lake was created to avenge a pregnant woman who was wronged by a princess. God was greatly angered by this injustice, and in his wrath turned all of the land surrounding the woman (except the ground she was sitting on) into water forming a lake, destroying the princess along with her friends and family in the process. Where the pregnant woman was sitting became an island (now a peninsula) where Istifanos Monastery, founded in the middle of the 13th century by Iyasus

Mo’a, is located. A former student of Iyasus Mo’a, Tekle Haymanot, went on to found the monastery of Debra Asbos (renamed in the 15th century to Debre Libanos) in Shewa. Tekle Haymanot was one of five bright young religious students who became the “five lights of Christianity” for the south of Ethiopia. Iyasus Mo’a also played a role in Yekuno Amlak’s overthrow of the Zagwe dynasty, and helped restore the Solomonic dynasty. Upon Yekuno Amlak’s ascension to the throne, Istifanos Church became Istifanos Monastery.

The church was established around the 8th century during the Axumite era, and was the first one in what was then the Amhara province. The events surrounding its establishment, however, are not clear. Some legends suggest that there was an Aksumite palace in Ambasselle opposite the modern Istifanos monastery, located on the opposite side of the Lake Hayq. Imam Ahmad Gragn looted and burned this church in November, 1531. The ruins of the church are still visible, and the legend states that the kings and princes who lived in that palace established the church. The first known European to view the lake was Francisco Álvares, who passed near it 21 September 1520; he mentions the lake had hippopotamuses and catfish, and the land around it were planted in lemons, oranges and citrons.

Debre Libanos Monastery

Debre Libanos is a monastery in Ethiopia, lying northwest of Addis Ababa in the Oromia Region. Founded in the thirteenth century by Saint Tekle Haymanot, the monastery’s chief abbot, called the Ichege, was the second most powerful official in the Ethiopian Church after the Abuna.

The monastery complex sits on a terrace between a cliff and the gorgle of one of the tributaries of the Abbay River (the Blue Nile). None of the original buildings of Debre Libanos survive. Current buildings include the church over Tekle Haymanot’s tomb, which Emperor Haile Selassie ordered constructed in 1961; a slightly older Church of the Cross, where Buxton was told a fragment of the True Cross is preserved; and five religious schools.

Along the side of the church, you cross a river and proceed on foot up a hill for about 15 minutes. According to legend, the Ethiopian Saint, Tekle Haimanot, prayed for 7 years. The legend says that he stood on one foot for so long that the other foot fell off. Sick people queue to receive holy water (which is believed to be a sign of the saint’s prayer).

Lake Ziway Islands and Monasteries