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The Sahara
Desert
You cannot picture North Africa
without seeing The Sahara Desert. This truly unique place had to have a blog on
its own. Half the Sahara receives less than 2 cms or 0.79 inches rainfall
per year, the rest up to 10 cms or 3.9 inches. Rainfall is very rare, when it
does rain it is usually torrential especially when it occurs after long dry
periods that can last for years. Plymouth, Devon by comparison averages 966 cms
or 38 inches per year.
The Sahara ( Arabic: الصحراء الكبرى, aṣ-ṣaḥrā´ al-kubra, "The Great Desert" ) is the world's largest hot desert and the world's
second largest desert after Antarctica. At over 9,000,000 square
kilometers ( 3,500,000 square miles ), it covers most parts of
Northern Africa; an area stretching from the Red Sea, including parts of the
Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean. To the south, it
is delimited by the Sahel, a belt of semi-arid tropical savanna separating the
Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara is almost as large as the continental
USA, and is larger than Australia. The Sahara has an intermittent history that
may go back as much as 3 million years. Mention Sahara and most people
immediately think of sand dunes, some of which can reach 180 meters (600
ft) in height. Its name comes from the Tamajaq Tuareg language word Tenere,
which means "the desert". Translated into the Arabic it gave Sahara
"desert".
 
PEOPLES and
LANGUAGES.
The predynastic Egyptians were the
first people to inhabit and build in the Sahara from around 6000 BC, the Nubians
from 5000 BC, the Phoenicians between 1200 and 800 BC and the Greeks from 500
BC. Nowadays the Sahara is home to a number of peoples and languages. Arabic is
the most widely spoken language in the Sahara, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.
Berber People are found from western Egypt to
Morocco, including the Tuareg pastoralists of the
central Sahara. The Beja live in the Red Sea Hills of
southeastern Egypt and eastern Sudan. The Arabic, Berber, and Beja languages are
part of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Speakers of the Nilo-Saharan
language family also inhabit the Sahara, including the Fur of Darfur in western
Sudan and the Saharan languages of Niger, Chad and Sudan, which includes the
Kanuri, Tegeda and
Dazaga.
FAUNA
- Dromedary camels
and goats are the most domesticated animals found
in the Sahara. Because of its qualities of sobriety, endurance and speed, the
dromedary is the favorite animal used by nomads.
- The Leiurus quinquestriatus (aka deathstalker)
scorpion which can be 10 cm (3.9 in)
long. Its venom contains large amounts of agitoxin and scyllatoxin and is very
dangerous; however, a sting from this scorpion rarely kills a healthy adult.
- The monitor lizard. It
has been suggested that the occasional habit of varanids to stand on their two
hind legs and to appear to "monitor" their surroundings led to the original
Arabic name waral ورل, which is translated to English as "monitor".
- Sand Vipers,
which average less than 50 cm (20 in) in length. Many have a pair of
horns, one over each eye. Active at night, they usually lie buried in the sand
with only their eyes visible. Bites are painful, but rarely
fatal.
- The fennec fox, an
omnivore.
- The hyrax. It first
appears in the fossil record over 40 million years ago, and for many millions
of years hyraxes were the primary terrestrial herbivore in Africa.
- The ostrich which is a
flightless bird native to Africa. They have become rare in the desert itself.
- The addax, a large
white antelope, is a threatened species. Adapted to the desert, they can
remain months without drinking, even a whole year.
- The Saharan cheetah
lives in Niger, Mali and Chad. There remain only a few hundred cheetahs which
are very cautious, fleeing any human presence. The cheetah avoids the sun from
April to October. It then seeks the shelter of shrubs such as balanites and
acacias. They are unusually pale in colour.
There are 207 species of bird that live in and around
the Sahara such as African
Silverbill, Black-throated Firefinch
and the Secretary
Bird.
MODERN TIMES
Egypt became independent of Britain in
1936, although the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 allowed Britain to keep troops
in Egypt and maintained the British-Egyptian condominium in the Sudan. British
military forces were withdrawn in 1954. Most of the Saharan states achieved
independence after World War II: Libya in 1951, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia in
1956, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger in 1960, and Algeria in 1962. Spain
withdrew from Western Sahara in 1975, and it was partitioned between Mauritania
and Morocco. Mauritania withdrew in 1979, and Morocco continues to hold the
territory. The modern era has seen a number of mines and communities develop to
exploit the desert's natural resources. These include large deposits of oil and
natural gas in Algeria and Libya and large deposits of phosphates in
Morocco and Western Sahara. A number of Trans-African highways have been
proposed across the Sahara, including the Cairo-Dakar Highway along the Atlantic
coast, the Trans-Sahara Highway from Algiers on the Mediterranean to Kano
in Nigeria, the Tripoli-Cape Town Highway from Tripoli in Libya to Ndjamena in
Chad, and the Cairo-Cape Town Highway which follows the Nile. Each of these
highways is partially complete, with significant gaps and unpaved
sections.
  
The picture we all conjure up
when thinking of the Sahara is the expanse of sand with wind
blown-dunes, in reality there is also the snow-capped high Atlas Mountains and the date
trees, looking like a
weird forest.
All in all an amazing
place.
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