Top 10 North Africa facts

Muammar Gaddafi. Beginning in the 1980s Gadaffi travelled with his Amazonian Guard, which was a group of female bodyguards, hand-picked by Gaddafi himself. They reportedly were sworn to a life of celibacy. However, in the latter days of the Libyan civil war, accusations emerged from five members of the Amazonian Guard of rape and other abuse by the upper echelons of the Gaddafi government.

Kingdom of Kush. The Kingdom of Kush was an ancient kingdom situated south of Egypt, on the confluences of the Blue Nile and White Nile. Approximately 255 pyramids were constructed at three sites (including Meroe listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site) over a period of a few hundred years to serve as tombs for the Kushite kings and queens. These steep pyramids differ from Egyptian ones and were constructed much later.

It is rocky. Most of the Sahara consists of rocky hamada; ergs (large areas covered with sand dunes) form only about 20% of the total area.

Morocco. The name of fez comes from the city of Fes, Morocco, where it became fashionable among Andalusian Arabs in the 17th century. The fez got widely popular in the Ottoman Empire after 1829, when Sultan Mahmud II ordered his civil officials to wear the plain fez, and also banned the wearing of turbans.

In deserts. Desert rose is the colloquial name given to rosette formations of crystal clusters of gypsum or baryte which contain abundant sand grains. Desert roses occur when the crystals form in arid sandy conditions, such as the evaporation of a shallow salt basin.

Egypt. The English name Egypt is derived from the Ancient Greek Aígyptos, but it has nothing in common with the local name of the country (except maybe with the Late Egyptian name of Memphis - Hikuptah). Ancient Egyptians called their land Kemet, meaning "black soil" (as opposed to the desert). Today, Misr is the official name of Egypt, while Masr is the Egyptian-local pronunciation in the Egyptian Arabic.

Red Sea. The Red Sea is very saline due to high evaporation, very little precipitation, almost no river inflow and isolation from the rest of the Indian Ocean. Salinity reaches 41 ‰ in the northern part (Average for the world's seawater is ~35 ‰).

Agricultural fields. This is an astronaut photo of the Al Khufrah Oasis in Libya. The circular shape of fields is characteristic of center pivot irrigation. These fields are approximately 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) in diameter. Lighter colors indicate fields that have been harvested recently or just planted.

In Morocco. The Berber language is ancient and has 2200 years of written tradition. In 2011 Berber became a constitutionally official language of Morocco, after years of persecution (under the policy of Arabization). There is a movement among speakers of the closely related varieties of Northern Berber to unite them under a standard language.

The pound. When the British first got involved in Egypt in the nineteenth century, Egypt was using a monetary unit known as the piastre, or Qirsh. Since 100 piastres was roughly between the value of one pound sterling and one Guinea, a new unit, called the pound in English and the ginaih in Arabic, was created equal to one hundred piastres. The Egyptian pound, however, has never been exactly equal in value to the pound sterling.