Description : Addis Ababa (Amharic: አዲስ አበባ, Addis Abäba IPA: (About this soundlisten), "new flower"), also known as Finfinne (Oromo: Finfinne "natural spring"), is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. According to the 2007 census, the city has a population of 2,739,551 inhabitants. As a chartered city, Addis Ababa also serves as the capital city of the Oromia Region. It is where the African Union is headquartered and where its predecessor the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was based. It also hosts the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), as well as various other continental and international organisations. Addis Ababa is therefore often referred to as "the political capital of Africa" for its historical, diplomatic and political significance for the continent. The city lies a few miles west of the East African Rift which splits Ethiopia into two, between the Nubian Plate and the Somali Plate. The city is surrounded by the Special Zone of Oromia and populated by people from different regions of Ethiopia. It is home to Addis Ababa University. Prior to the establishment of present-day Addis Ababa the location was called Finfinne in the Oromo language, which attests the presence of hot springs. The area was inhabited by various Oromo clans. In 1886 the city was chosen by Menelik II as the capital of his kingdom of Shoa and was renamed to Addis Ababa. The city's immediate predecessor as capital of Ethiopia, Entoto, was situated on a high tableland and was found to be unsatisfactory because of its cold climate and an acute shortage of firewood. Entoto is one of a handful of sites put forward as a possible location for a medieval imperial capital known as Barara. This permanent fortified city was established during the early-to-mid 15th century, and it served as the main residence of several successive emperors up to the early 16th-century reign of Lebna Dengel. For instance, Baeda Maryam I (1468-1478) set up royal court in nearby Gurage country from his initial place of reign and birthplace Debre Berhan, which would have encompassed this general region. The city was depicted standing between Mounts Zikwala and Menegasha on a map drawn by the Italian cartographer Fra Mauro in around 1450, and it was razed and plundered by Ahmed Gragn while the imperial army was trapped on the south of the Awash River in 1529, an event witnessed and documented two years later by the Yemeni writer Arab-Faqih. The suggestion that Barara was located on Mount Entoto is supported by the very recent discovery of a large medieval town overlooking Addis Ababa located between rock-hewn Washa Mikael and the more modern church of Entoto Maryam, founded in the late 19th century by Emperor Menelik. Dubbed the Pentagon, the 30-hectare site incorporates a castle with 12 towers, along with 520 meters of stone walls measuring up to 5-meter high. The site of Addis Ababa was chosen by Empress Taytu Betul and the city was founded in 1886 by Emperor Menelik II. Menelik, as initially a King of the Shewa province, had found Mount Entoto a useful base for military operations in the south of his realm, and in 1879 he visited the reputed ruins of a medieval town and an unfinished rock church that showed proof of the medieval empire's capital in the area before the campaigns of Ahmad ibn Ibrihim. His interest in the area grew when his wife Taytu began work on a church on Mount Entoto, and Menelik endowed a second church in the area.
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