Zula is a small town near the head of Annesley Bay on the African coast of the Red Sea. There are ruins in its vicinity which are generally supposed to mark the site of the ancient emporium of Adulis the port of Axum, Christian era for the ivory, hides, slaves and other exports of the interior. Cosmas Indicopleustes saw here an inscription of Ptolemy Euergetes (247-222 B.C.), and hence, as the earliest mention of Adulis is found in the geographers of the 1st century A.D., it is conjectured that the town must have previously existed under another name and may have been the Berenice Panchrysus of the Ptolemies. The place was described by a Greek merchant of the time of Vespasian as " a well-arranged market".
In 1857 an agreement was entered into by Dejaj Negusye, a chief of Tigre, in revolt against the Negus Theodore of Abyssinia, to cede Zula to the French. Negusye was defeated by Theodore, and the commander of a French cruiser sent to Annesley Bay in 1859 found the country in a state of anarchy. No further steps were taken by France to assert its sovereignty, and Zula with the neighbouring coast passed, nominally, to Egypt in 1866 Zula was the place where the British expedition of 1867 — 68 against Theodore disembarked, Annesley Bay affording safe and ample anchorage for the largest ocean-going vessels. A road was built by the British from Zula to Senafe on the Abyssinian plateau. The authority of Egypt having lapsed, an Italian protectorate over the district of Zula was proclaimed in 1888, and in 1890 it was incorporated into the colony of Eritrea.
- From an old 1911 encyclopedia
