Syrian desert

The Syrian desert (Arabic: بادية الشام Bādiyat Ash-Shām), also known as the North Arabian desert, the Jordanian steppe, the Syrian steppe, or the Badiya, or Badiyat al-Sham, is a region of desert, semi-desert, and steppe, covering about 500,000 square kilometers (200,000 square miles) of West Asia, including parts of northern Saudi Arabia, eastern Jordan, southern Syria, and western Iraq. It accounts for about 85% of the land area of Jordan and 55% of Syria. To the south, it borders and merges into the Arabian Desert. The land is open, rocky or gravelly desert pavement, cut with occasional wadis, or river valleys, generally dry riverbeds.

Location and name

The desert is bounded by the Orontes Valley and the volcanic field of Harrat al-Shamah to the west, and by the Euphrates to the east. In the north, the desert gives way to the more fertile areas and to the south it runs into the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula.

Parts of the Syrian Desert have been referred to otherwise, such as Homs Desert, Palmyrene Desert for the part around Palmyra, and, from an Iraqi point of view, Western Desert for the part of the eastern section of the Syrian Desert that lies entirely within the borders of Iraq. The name Shamiyah has also been used for the Syrian Desert, the name having been translated in the past as Badiyat al-Sham or Badiyat ash-Sham.

Geography

The 700–900-metre high (2,300–3,000 ft) region in the middle of the desert is the Hamad Plateau, a rather flat, stony semi-desert consisting of limestone bedrock covered with chert gravel. What little rain arrives on the plateau flows into local salt flats.