Saguntum
a former town of Spain, S. of the Ebro, about 3 miles from the coast. It is famous in Roman history; its siege by Hannibal in 219-218 в. c. having given rise to the second Punic War. The site is occupied by the modern town of Murviedro.
SAHARA (Arabic Sáh'ra), the vast desert region of North Africa, stretching from the Atlantic to the Nile, and from the S. confines of Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli S. to the vicinity of the Niger and Lake Tchad. It is usual to regard SAHARA the Libyan Desert, lying between Egypt, the Central Sudan, and Tripoli, as a separate division. Both are, however, links in the chain of great deserts that girdle the Old World from the Atlantic coast across Africa, Arabia, Persia, Turkestan, and Mongolia to the Pacific. It was long customary to assert that the Sahara was the bed of an ancient inland sea, and that it consisted of a vast, uniform expanse of sand, swept up here and there into ridges by the wind. But this idea is utterly erroneous. Since the French became masters of Algeria, they have completely revolutionized our knowledge of the Sahara, at all events of the country immediately to the S. of Algeria and Tunis. The surface, instead of being uniform and depressed below sea-level, is highly diversified, and attains in one place an altitude of fully 8,000 feet.
From the neighborhood of Cape Blanco in the W. a vast bow or semicircle of sand-dunes stretches right round the N. side of the Sahara to Fezzan, skirting the Atlas Mountains and the mountains of Algeria. This long belt of sand hills varies in width from 50 to 300 miles, and is known by the names Igidi and Erg, both meaning "sand hills." The hills rise to 300 feet (in one place, it is said, to more than 1,000 feet), though the average elevation is about 70 feet. Water is nearly always to be found below the surface in the hollows between the different chains of these sand hills, and there a few dry plants struggle to maintain a miserable existence. S. of Algeria, on the other side of the Erg, the country rises into the lofty plateau of Ahaggar (4,000 feet), which fills all the middle parts of the Sahara. Its surface runs up into veritable mountains 6,500 feet high, which, incredible as it may seem, are covered with snow for three months in the year. On the S. it apparently falls again toward the basins of the Niger and Lake Tchad; nevertheless there are mountain ranges along the E. side reaching 8,000 feet in Mount Tusidde in the Tibbu country, and a mountain knot in the oasis of Air (or Asben) which reaches up to 6,500 feet. Mountainous tracts occur also in the W., between Morocco and Timbuctoo, but of inferior elevation (2,000 feet). These mountainous parts embrace many deep valleys, most of them seamed with the dry beds of ancient rivers, as the Igharghar and the Mya, both going some hundreds of miles N. toward the "shotts" of Algeria and Tunis. These valleys always yield an abundance of water, if not on the surface in the watercourses, then a short distance below it, and are mostly inhabited, and grazed by the cattle and sheep and camels of the natives. 1 SAHARA Another characteristic type of Saharan landscape is a low plateau strewn with rough blocks of granite and other rocks, and perfectly barren. In very many parts of the Sahara, especially in the valleys of the mountainous parts, in the recesses or bays at the foot of the hills, alongside the watercourses, and in the hollows of the sand-dunes, in all which localities water is wont to exist, there are oaseshabitable, cultivable spots, islands of verdure in the midst of the ocean of desert. These oases occur in greatest number along the S. face of the Atlas and the Algerian mountains, on the N. side of the Ahaggar plateau. These lines of oases mark the great caravan routes between the Central Sudan States and the Mediterranean.
A large portion of the Sahara, though not the whole, was undoubtedly under water at one time, probably in the Cretaceous period and earlier. Then the surface seems to have been in great part elevated, so that the waters remained only in some lakes and in gulfs near the Mediterranean coast. The Romans had colonies or military posts a long way S., in what are now desert regions; and both Herodotus and Pliny tell us that the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the crocodile, all animals that only live near abundant supplies of water, were common throughout North Africa in their day. None of the Egyptian inscriptions or animal sculptures represent the camel, nor do the Greek and Roman historians mention it either as being a denizen of North Africa.
The camel is now the principal carrier across the Sahara, and must have been introduced since the beginning of the Christian era. The inference from these and other facts is that the process of desiccation has gone on more rapidly during the last 2,000 years. The range of temperature is exceedingly great: often the thermometer falls from considerably more than 100° F. during the day to just below freezingpoint at night. In the W. of the Sahara the daily average is 85° in the shade in the month of May. Rain does fall in certain parts of the Sahara with more or less frequency; but in most districts on the average after intervals of two to five years.
The plant life is very rich in the oases, the date palm, which has its home in these regions, being the most valuable possession of these fertile spots. But fruit trees, as oranges, lemons, peaches, figs, pomegranates, etc., are also grown, with cereals, rice, durrha, millet, and suchlike food crops. In the desert regions the plant life is confined principally to tamarisks, prickly acacias and similar thorny shrubs and trees, salsolaceæ, and coarse SAHARANPUR grasses. The animals most commonly met with include the giraffe, two or three kinds of antelope, wild cattle, the wild ass, desert fox, jackal, hare, lion (only on the borders of the desert), ostrich, desert lark, crow, viper, and python. The people keep as domestic animals the camel, horse, sheep, and goat.
The human inhabitants, who are estimated altogether at about 2,000,000, consist of Moors, Tuareg, Tibbu, Negroes, Arabs, and Jews. The Moors and Tuareg are both Berbers; the former live between Morocco and Senegal, the latter in the middle, S. of Algeria and Tunis. The Tuareg are great traders, and control the principal caravan routes. The Tibbu, who number about 200,000, occupy the oases between Fezzan and Lake Tchad.
The Arabs of pure stock are very few; they have become mixed with the Berbers and the Negroes. The most valuable products of the Sahara are dates and salt, the latter collected on the salt pans, and made from the rock-salt of the Taudeni in the W., and of Kawar (Bilma) in the E.; the remaining products are horses, soda, and a little saltpeter. But for many long years there has been a very active trade carried on by caravans between the central Sudan and Niger countries and the Mediterranean states, the ivory, ostrich feathers, gums, spices, musk, hides, gold dust, indigo, cotton, palm oil, shea butter, kola nuts, ground nuts, silver, dates, salt, and alum of the interior lands being exchanged for the manufactured wares (textiles, weapons, gunpowder, etc.) of European countries.
Scientific men have eagerly discussed the possibility of reclaiming the Sahara from the arid desolation to which such a vast proportion of its surface is now abandoned. One scheme has been carried out with success in limited areas. It consists in boring of artesian wells, and with the water so obtained irrigating the soil in the vicinity. This method of reclaiming the desert has been prosecuted by the French with great energy since 1856.
Water is generally found at depths varying from 10 to 300 feet, and in great abundance. Wherever these wells have been bored the date palm groves and the orchards have increased greatly in extent, and the population has become much denser.