Harrat al-Sham

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.