The Sahara - Arabic for "desert" or "empty area" - is a predominantly flat

realm of rock, gravel and sand seas that blankets 9 million sq km of the northern

third of Africa. It streches 5,000km from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and is

about 2,000km from north to south.

　　The Sahara is the largest desert in the world with aridity and temperature extremes

to match its size and little surface water other than, ironically, the world's longest river

- the Nile, which flows 6,4000km from the mountains in equatorial Africa north to the

Mediterranean.　The rest of the Sahara is sparsely dotted by oases, which together make up less than 2,000 sq km.

The Sahara is bounded to the north by the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea, to the west of the Atlantic

Ocean and to the east by the Red Sea; Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Mali,

Niger, Chad, Sudan. Its southern boundary is much harder to define. A semiarid region called the Sahel is the

transitional zone between the desert and the savanna of trapical southern Africa.

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