Tigray Region
Tigray is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, the Afar Region to the east, and the Amhara Region to the south and southwest. Besides Mekelle, major cities include Adigrat, Aksum, Shire, Humera, Adwa, Alamata, Wukro, Maychew, Sheraro, Abiy Adi, Korem, Qwiha, Hawzen, Mekoni and Zalambessa. There is also the historically significant town of Yeha.
Tigrayans
A usually urban and semi-urban sub-group are the Muslim Tigrayans, who form around 5% of the Tigrayan population (in Eritrea called Jeberti, a term often rejected, however, by Muslim Tigrayns). Most are merchants, but some are peasants with traditional land rights, such as in their sacred town Negash in eastern Tigray, and in a few other street settlements, e.g. Wukro Meray near Aksum (with the mosque used by the Muslims of Aksum) or Enticho. In the past, many Muslim Tigrayans also acted as servants for wealthy farmers and nobles. Most settled near trade routes and in important towns, such as Asmara and Keren in Eritrea, or Adwa, Enticho, Adigrat, Wukro, or Mekelle in Tigray. Arabic inscriptions prove a Muslim presence in eastern Tigray along trade routes (in Enderta and Sera) already starting from around the 9th or 10th century. Islam as practiced by Tigrayans has barely been studied yet, but seems to be marked by influences of diverse origins, from the Sudan, Egypt, and Muslim communities of the Yemen and the Hijaz. According to tradition, the festival of Ashura, on 10th Muharram, was introduced in 1664/65 by a council chaired by a Muslim of Tembien, which decided to make Negash a pilgrimage center with Ashura as the annual day of pilgrmage; suppressed later, the festival was revived in the 1990s. The Tigrayan Muslims are Sunnis, and Ashura is celebrated as a day when "prophets" (e.g. Moses) were "relieved from difficulties", which is also an allusion to Negash as the asylum for the persecuted followers of Prophet Muhammed. The festival may have been established as a response against Shi'ite influence, possibly from the Zaydites of the Yemen, whose connection to the coast is known from the 17th century.