Arabian Desert

The Arabian Desert covers most of the Arabian Peninsula in southwest Asia. It is the largest desert in Asia (just bigger than the Gobi) and contains the famous Empty Quarter, the largest continuous sand sea on Earth. The Arabian Desert is the homeland of the Bedouin nomads, the source of much of the world's oil, and the historical home of Islam.

  • Areaapprox. 2.3 million km²Bigger than Mexico
  • Countries8Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar
  • Hottest tempapprox. 54 °CIn summer
  • Famous partThe Empty QuarterLargest continuous sand sea on Earth
  • Famous peopleThe BedouinCamel-riding nomads
  • Famous animalArabian oryxSaved from extinction by captive breeding

The Arabian Desert compared to other deserts

Area (million km²)
Sahara9.2
Arabian2.3
Gobi1.3
Kalahari0.9

The Arabian Desert is the fourth largest non-polar desert in the world. It covers about three quarters of the Arabian Peninsula.

What is the Arabian Desert?

The Arabian Desert is the vast dry region that covers most of the Arabian Peninsula, the diamond-shaped land between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The desert is divided into several distinct sand seas with different names. The largest, in the south, is the Rub' al Khali or Empty Quarter. To the north sit the smaller An Nafud and Ad Dahna sand deserts. The mountains of western Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman get slightly more rain and are less harshly desert.

The Empty Quarter

The Empty Quarter (Rub' al Khali in Arabic) is the largest continuous sand desert on Earth. It covers approx. 650,000 square km of southern Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE and Yemen, an area larger than France. The Empty Quarter is so dry and inhospitable that it was almost completely unexplored by outsiders until the 20th century. The famous British explorer Wilfred Thesiger crossed it twice in the 1940s with Bedouin guides, becoming one of the first non-Arabs ever to do so. His book Arabian Sands (1959) tells the story.

The sand seas of the Empty Quarter contain some of the tallest dunes in the world, rising up to 250 metres above the desert floor. Most of the sand is a pale pink-red colour, coloured by iron oxides similar to those that colour the Namib.

Fact The Arabian Desert sits on top of the world's largest reserves of oil and natural gas. Saudi Arabia alone holds approx. 15% of the world's known oil. The oil was formed from ancient marine plankton that died in shallow seas tens of millions of years before the desert existed.

People of the desert

The Bedouin are the traditional desert-dwellers of the Arabian Peninsula. For centuries they lived as nomads, moving between oases and seasonal pastures with their camels and goats. Bedouin culture developed a famous code of hospitality, in which any traveller (even an enemy) had to be welcomed and protected for three days and nights. Camels were essential, providing milk, meat, wool, transport and an enormous range of practical uses.

Most Bedouin now live settled lives in towns rather than the desert, but Bedouin culture and traditions remain hugely important to Arab identity across the peninsula.

The birth of Islam

The Arabian Desert was the birthplace of Islam. The Prophet Muhammad was born in the trading city of Mecca, on the western edge of the desert, in around 570 AD. He received his first revelations in 610 AD. The new religion spread across Arabia within his lifetime and across much of Asia and Africa within a century after his death. Mecca and the nearby city of Medina remain the two holiest cities in Islam, and millions of Muslims travel to the desert each year on pilgrimage.

The Arabian oryx

The Arabian oryx is a beautiful white antelope with long straight horns. It was hunted almost to extinction by the 1970s; the last wild one was shot in 1972. A captive breeding programme using zoo animals and a few captured strays slowly rebuilt the population. Arabian oryx were reintroduced to the wild in Oman in 1982 and now number over 1,200 in the wild, plus 6,000 in semi-captive conditions across the region. They are one of conservation's great success stories.

Did you know? The fastest large land animal in Arabia is the Arabian sand cat, which can run across the burning sand without its paws being scorched because the bottoms of its feet are covered in thick fur. It also can survive without drinking water, getting all the moisture it needs from its prey.
Deeper dive: oil formation, the Empty Quarter's exploration and modern desert cities

The Arabian Peninsula sits on top of the largest concentration of hydrocarbons in the world. Between approx. 200 and 50 million years ago, this region was covered by warm shallow seas where vast quantities of microscopic plankton lived, died and sank to the seabed. The dead plankton accumulated in thick layers of organic mud, which was then buried under further sediment, heated and slowly transformed into oil and natural gas over tens of millions of years. The geology of the peninsula (with vast underground domes and folds of porous rock capped by impermeable layers) is exceptionally good at trapping and storing this oil. Saudi Arabia has approximately 270 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, approx. 15% of the global total. The income from oil has transformed the Gulf states from impoverished desert nations in the early 20th century to some of the world's wealthiest per-capita today.

The Empty Quarter was one of the last great blank areas on the world map. Until the 1930s, no non-Arab had crossed it and large parts were entirely unmapped. The British explorer Bertram Thomas crossed it for the first time in 1930 to 1931, accompanied by Bedouin guides. Wilfred Thesiger crossed it twice in the late 1940s and his account in Arabian Sands remains the classic Western description. The Empty Quarter was also one of the great oil prospecting frontiers; the discovery of the giant Ghawar oil field on its northern edge in 1948 changed Saudi Arabia's history forever. Today the Empty Quarter remains thinly populated but is crossed by oil and gas pipelines, and increasingly by tourism and adventure expeditions.

The Arabian Peninsula now contains some of the most spectacularly modern cities in the world, built largely with oil money. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Riyadh have transformed from small desert towns to glittering modern megacities in a single generation. These cities also illustrate the challenge of building in the desert: they require enormous quantities of water (mostly produced by energy-intensive desalination of seawater), constant air conditioning, and the import of much of their food. The economic models of these cities are now beginning to shift as the Gulf states prepare for the day when global demand for oil declines. Saudi Arabia's NEOM project, an ambitious plan for a futuristic city in the northwest of the country, is one example.

The biggest country in the Arabian Desert is Saudi Arabia. To the north lies the Syrian Desert.

Geography

The Arabian Desert spans the entire Arabian Peninsula, covering about 2.33 million km². It is dominated by the Rub' al Khali (Empty Quarter) in the south — the world's largest continuous sand sea, covering 650,000 km². The terrain ranges from vast sand dunes to gravel plains, salt flats and rocky escarpments.

Climate

Extremely hot and dry. Summer temperatures regularly exceed 50°C and can reach 55°C. Winter nights can drop below 0°C in highland areas. Annual rainfall is very low, averaging 30–40 mm, with some areas receiving almost none. Shamal winds create powerful sandstorms that can reduce visibility to zero.

Wildlife and plants

Despite the harsh conditions, the Arabian Desert supports Arabian oryx (reintroduced from extinction), sand gazelles, Arabian wolves, caracals, sand cats, monitor lizards, and the Arabian sand boa. Camels are domesticated but well-adapted. The houbara bustard and various raptors are among the desert birds.

History

The Arabian Desert has been inhabited by Bedouin nomads for thousands of years, who developed a sophisticated understanding of the desert's resources. It was the birthplace of Islam in the 7th century CE. The discovery of vast oil and gas reserves beneath the desert in the 20th century transformed the region from one of the world's poorest areas to one of the wealthiest.