Ash Shaam, Harrat

About Ash Shaam, Harrat

The massive Harrat Ash Shaam volcanic province, which extends from Syria through Jordan and into northern Saudi Arabia, contains many smaller volcanic fields. Activity began during the Miocene; a younger eruptive stage, at the SE end of the field, occurred during the late Pleistocene and Holocene (Brown et al., 1984). Al Harrah, a large basaltic volcanic field in northwestern Saudi Arabia, covers an area of 15,200 km2 and forms the southern third of the harrat across a 210-km-long, roughly 75-km-wide area. Other fields include the Jabal ad Druze, Es Safa, Golan Heights, and the Kra Lava Field where radiocarbon dating indicated an eruption at 2,670 BCE ± 200 years. Although a "boiling lava lake" eruption has been in the volcanological literature since 1925, a translation of the original source of that report by Wetzstein (1860) clearly shows that he was describing solidified crater floor surface features and lava flows.