Mountain Ranges, Deserts and Landforms of Jordan

Geography

The Arabian Peninsula is located in the continent of Asia and is bounded by (clockwise) the Persian Gulf to the north-east, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman to the east, the Arabian Sea to the south-east, the Gulf of Aden and the Guardafui Channel to the south, and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait to the south-west and the Red Sea to the south-west and west.

The northern portion of the peninsula transitions into the Syrian Desert with no clear borderline, although the northern boundary of the peninsula is generally considered to be the northern borders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as the southern regions of Iraq and Jordan.

History

Prehistoric Arabia is the period of the Arabian Peninsula before any written records are known, going back to when humans first began to settle in the region, until around 1000 BC, when systematic written documentation begins to appear in the archaeological record. Stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic era along with fossils of other animals discovered at Ti's al Ghadah, in north-western Saudi Arabia, might imply that hominins migrated through a "Green Arabia" between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago.

Two-hundred-thousand-year-old stone tools were discovered at Shuaib Al-Adgham in the eastern Al-Qassim Province, which would indicate that many prehistoric sites, located along a network of rivers, had once existed in the area.

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. The highest peaks of the plateau are those of the 1,000 m (3,300 ft)+ Khawr um Wual in Saudi Arabia, and the 960-metre high (3,150 ft) Jebel Aneiza, at the border tripoint of Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Together with the other deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, the Hamad Desert has been described as one of the most arid deserts of the world.

History

The desert was historically inhabited by nomadic Arabs (Bedouins) and nomadic Aramean tribes, and many tribes still remain in the region, their members living mainly in towns and settlements built near oases. Some Bedouin still maintain their traditional way of life in the desert. Safaitic inscriptions, proto-Arabic texts written by literate Bedouin, are found throughout the Syrian Desert. These date roughly from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.

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.

Economy and agriculture

With low rainfall and poor-quality soils, today the region is principally used as rangeland for livestock. Bedouin herdsmen, many of whom are still nomadic, graze about twelve million sheep and goats here, as well as a smaller number of camels.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development aims to alleviate rural poverty, and in 1995, in cooperation with the Syrian government, it started a project to rehabilitate over a million hectares of degraded land in the Syrian Badia. In some areas, when grazing was restricted, there was a spontaneous return of many of the native plants. In other areas which were more heavily degraded, grazing restrictions were supplemented by reseeding and the planting of fodder species.

Geography

The Negev contains the oldest continuously exposed surface discovered on Earth, with an approximate age of 1.8 million years. During the Pleistocene, the Negev fluctuated between intervals of relative humidity and intervals of aridity similar to or even more severe than the present day; from around 80,000 to 13,000 years BP, during a time interval roughly corresponding to the Last Glacial Period, the Negev was significantly more humid than today. It covers more than half of Israel, over some 13,000 km2 (5,000 mi2), or at least 55% of the country's land area. It forms an inverted triangle shape whose western side is contiguous with the desert of the Sinai Peninsula, and whose eastern border is the Arabah valley. The Negev has a number of interesting cultural and geological features.

Climate

The Negev region is arid (Eilat receives on average only 24 mm (0.94 in) of rainfall a year), receiving very little rain due to its location to the east of the Sahara (as opposed to the Mediterranean, which lies to the west of Israel), and extreme temperatures due to its location 31 degrees north. However the northernmost areas of the Negev, including Beersheba, are semi-arid. The usual rainfall total from June to October inclusive is zero. Snow and frost are rare in the northern Negev, and snow and frost are unknown in the vicinity of Eilat in the southernmost Negev.

History

Nomadic life in the Negev dates back at least 4,000 years and perhaps as much as 7,000 years.

The first urbanised settlements were established by a combination of Canaanite, Amalekite, Amorite, Nabataean and Edomite groups c. 2000 BCE. Pharaonic Egypt is credited with introducing copper mining and smelting in both the Negev and the Sinai between 1400 and 1300 BC.

According to Israeli archaeologists, in the Hebrew Bible, the term Negev only relates to the northern, semi-arid part of what we call Negev today; of this, the Arad-Beersheba Valley, which receives enough rain to permit agriculture and therefore sedentary occupation (the "desert fringe"), is accordingly defined as "the eastern (biblical) Negev".

Economy and housing

Blueprint Negev is a Jewish National Fund project introduced in 2005. The $600 million project is intended to attract 500,000 new Jewish residents to the Negev by improving transport infrastructure, establishing businesses, developing water resources and introducing programmes to protect the environment. A planned artificial desert river, swimming pools and golf courses raised concerns among environmentalists. Critics oppose those plans, calling instead for an inclusive plan for the green vitalisation of existing population centres, investment in Bedouin villages, a clean-up of toxic industries and development of job options for the unemployed.