Arabian Desert

Arabian Desert or Eastern Desert, c.86,000 sq mi (222,740 sq km), E Egypt, bordered by the Nile valley in the west and the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez in the east. It extends along most of Egypt's eastern border and merges into the Nubian Desert in the south. The Arabian Desert is sparsely populated; most of its inhabitants are based around wells and springs. Today most of the desert can be accessed by roads. Since ancient times Egypt has used the porphyry, granite, limestone, and sandstone found in the desert mountains as building materials. Oil is produced in the north. The name Arabian Desert is also commonly applied to the desert of the Arabian Peninsula.

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Arabian Desert

The Rub' al-Khali sand desert, most of which lies within Saudi Arabia.

(credit: Lynn Abercrombie)

Desert region, Arabian Peninsula. It covers about 900,000 sq mi (2,330,000 sq km), occupying nearly the entire peninsula. It lies largely within Saudi Arabia but large portions extend into Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen. Its relief is broken by a number of mountain ranges, with elevations reaching as high as 12,000 ft (3,700 m), and it is bounded on three sides by high escarpments. At least one-third of the desert is covered by sand, including the Rub' al-Khali, considered to have one of the most inhospitable climates on Earth. There are no perennial bodies of water, though the Tigris-Euphrates river system lies to the northeast and the Wadi Hajr is located to the south, in Yemen. Humans have inhabited the area since Pleistocene times.