Arab World - Geography

Geography

The Arab World stretches across more than 13,000,000 square kilometres (5,000,000 sq mi) of North Africa and the part of North-East Africa and South-West Asia. The Asian part of the Arab world is called the Mashriq. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and often Mauritania are the Maghreb or Maghrib, while Egypt and Sudan are referred to as Nile Valley, Egypt is a transcontinental country by virtue of the Sinai Peninsula, which is in Asia, it has stronger cultural connections to the Mashriq.

The term "Arab" often connotes the Middle East, but the larger (and more populous) part of the Arab World is North Africa. Its eight million square kilometers include two of the largest countries of the African continent, Algeria (2.4 million km2) in the center of the region and Sudan (1.9 million km2) in the southeast. Algeria is about three-quarters the size of India, or about one-and-a-half times the size of Alaska, the largest state in the United States. The largest country in the Arab Middle East is Saudi Arabia (2 million km2).

At the other extreme, the smallest autonomous mainland Arab country in North Africa and the Middle East is Lebanon (10,452 km2), and the smallest island Arab country is Bahrain (665 km2).

Notably, every Arab country borders a sea or ocean, with the exception of the Arab region of northern Chad, which is completely landlocked. Iraq is actually nearly landlocked, as it has only a very narrow access to the Persian Gulf.