page_title: Syrian Desert
section_title: Location and name
hierarchical_section_title: Syrian Desert / Location and name
caption_attribution_description: petsgoplaces.blogspot.com/
context_page_description: The Syrian Desert, also known as the Syrian steppe, the Jordanian steppe, or the Badia, is a region of desert, semi-desert and steppe covering 500,000 square kilometers of the Middle East, including parts of south-eastern Syria, northeastern Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia, and western Iraq. It accounts for 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.
context_section_description: The desert is bounded by the Orontes Valley and 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 of grass, and the south it runs into the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula.
  Some sources equate the Syrian Desert with the "Hamad Desert", while others limit the name Hamad to the southern central plateau, and a few consider the Hamad to be the whole region and the Syrian Desert just the northern part.
  Several parts of the Syrian Desert have been referred to separately such as the Palmyrene desert around Palmyra, and the Homs desert. The eastern section of the Syrian Desert, that within borders of Iraq, can be referred to (within Iraqi context) as the Western Desert.
  The name Shamiyah has also been used for the Syrian Desert.
  The name has been translated in the past as Badiyat al-Sham (or Badiyat ash-Sham)
caption: View of the Syrian Desert.
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