Syrian desert
The Syrian Desert ( Arabic بادية الشام, DMG bādiyat aš-šām ), also known as the Badia Desert , is the western part of the north Arabian dry steppe, which includes almost two thirds of the land area of Syria , eastern Jordan and part of western Iraq and northern Saudi Arabia . The fertile crescent north of the Euphrates turns into a rain-free steppe with decreasing rainfall towards the south and gradually rises beyond the Syrian border to the hyperarid desert of the plateau of Inner Arabia .
geography
The overall climate of the Syrian Desert is considered to be desert steppe. The Euphrates forms its border with the Jazira to the north . In this area, the average annual rainfall is already below 150 millimeters, so arable farming is only possible with irrigation in the Euphrataue. The rains in the winter months allow semi-nomadic cattle breeding of goats and sheep. In the west, around 100 kilometers from this north-south line to the east up to the cultivation limit (around 250 millimeters of precipitation) in the west of the Syrian old settlements with fertile arable plains along the line Homs - Aleppo the steppe extended. Salamiyya is one of these fringe settlements, which was founded by Ismailis from the Jebel Ansariye .
To the south of it, the lava fields of the Syrian Desert reach as far as the mountain range of Jebel ad-Duruz in the Hauran region . The main road between the cities mentioned continues south via Damascus and crosses all of Jordan. It marks the western border of the Syrian Desert there.
The highest elevation of the desert in Syria is at 1390 meters a summit of the Jabal Abu Rudschmain, a rugged rocky mountain range north of Palmyra , which rises from the sandy-stony plain about 500 meters high.
In summer, temperatures rise to 45 to 50 degrees, while in the winter months of December to February they can drop below freezing at night. This makes the climate similar to the deserts of North Africa.
Names
Al-Bādiya ("steppe, desert") means the land of the Bedouins to the demarcation of al-Jazira north of the Euphrates. As an old geographical name, Bādiya stands for the vast desert steppe ( Ṣaḥārā ) , in which nomads roam in search of pastureland, in contrast to Ḥāḍira, where there are permanent settlements surrounded by arable land and where the Bedouins retreat to their summer camps at water points. More broadly, Bādiya means all land outside fortified settlements. Ash-Shām ( aš-Šām ) is the Arabic word for Damascus.
In ancient Egypt, all hostile peoples and peoples living outside the empire were called nine arches . One of these peoples was called Chaset-charu in the ancient Egyptian language , which translates as "Syrian desert". Chaset is the word for "desert" with charu were Hurrians meant.
literature
- Christina Phelps Grant: The Syrian desert: Caravans, Travel and Exploration. Kegan Paul, New York 1937
- Eugen Wirth : Morphological and pedological observations in the Syrian-Iraqi desert. In: Geography. Volume 12, Issue 1, February 1958, pp. 26-42
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Normann N. Lewis: Nomads and settlers in Syria and Jordan, 1800–1980. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987, map p. 18
- ↑ Lewis, pp. 1, 5
- ↑ January Retsö: The Arabs in antiquity: Their history from the Assyrians to the Umayyads. Routledge Curzan, 2002, pp. 82f
Coordinates: 35 ° N , 38 ° E