Philip Briggs speculates that this town may be identified with the mysterious
Kubar, said by al-
Ya'qubi and al-
Masudi to have succeeded
Axum as the capital of Ethiopia. Sekota is the historic seat of the
Wagshum, the former ruler of
Lasta, who claimed to trace an unbroken succession back to the last king of the
Zagwe dynasty. However, verification for this tradition is slight. This town is not mentioned in the surviving records until 1746, when the soldiers of Emperor
Iyasu II burned it down. The traveler
Augustus B. Wylde wrote in the 1890s that the palace of the Wagshums in this town had been built around 1650. It was a three-storey structure which could not be dated with any precision, but he believed the masons and craftsmen were some of those who had worked at
Gondar.
Nathaniel Pearce, notes that Sekota was where
Ras Haile Wand Bewossen had his palace in 1813, and performed his annual review of his troops on 17 Masqaram, as was the custom.
Charles Beke, who passed through Sekota in April 1843, described it as "a place of considerable size but is so very straggling that it is not easy to form a definite idea on the subject. It has a large market, held on Tuesday and Wednesday weekly, which is frequented by the merchants of the south and west, this place is the grand center of the salt-trade, the Tigre merchants coming thus far only, and then returning." In Wylde's time, the market at Sekota was still held each week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
20th century During the
Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Sekota was occupied by the Italians on 28 March 1936. During their occupation, the Italians built a road to Sekota passable by motorcars, and repaired the town's mosque. Sekota was briefly held by the
Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) during the
Ethiopian Civil War around 1980. In 1988, Sekota was the base of the
Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement, founded by a group of former EPRP fighters, which operated in northern Wollo jointly with the TPLF.
21st century Tigray War EEPA an NGO, reported that the
Tigray Defence Forces controlled
Sekota in
Amhara on 16 August 2021. Government forces then retook the town on 22 December 2021 == Demographics ==