The Ḥarrat al-Shām, also known as the Harrat al-Harra or Harrat al-Shaba, and colloquially as the Black Desert in English, is a region of rocky, basaltic desert straddling southern Syrian region and the northern Arabian Peninsula. It covers an area of some 40,000 km2 (15,000 sq mi) in the modern-day Syrian Arab Republic, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Vegetation is characteristically open acacia shrubland with patches of juniper at higher altitudes.