Q: Is All of Harad in Middle-earth a Desert?
ANSWER: No. Harad is simply the Sindarin word for “south” and it is used to denote the lands that lie to the south of Gondor and Mordor. Tolkien describes Harad as being much warmer than the northern lands but this is to be expected, given that he implied Gondor would be approximately at the latitude of Italy, Greece, and Turkey.
In the Third Age Middle-earth is a round world, our world, a globe orbiting a sun, and therefore Harad refers to a vast area of the globe — much larger than that depicted on the maps published in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
According to the criteria Tolkien laid down — that Middle-earth is in fact our own world — we must accept that somewhere in the distant regions of Harad there are lands that gradually become cooler and eventually become as cool as the frigid northern lands that land north of the Shire.
Many readers unfortunately misinterpret the blank areas on Tolkien’s maps as “desert lands”, although the only such location where he uses that expression (Harondor) is not really a desert. Rather, Tolkien uses the word “desert” in this context to mean “wasteland, thing abandoned, wilderness” — which is a much older and broader use of the word. The modern sense of an arid, treeless region arose from Middle English.
There were undoubtedly deserts in Harad (and probably Rhun) as these regions are meant to correspond approximately to Africa and Asia respectively (as well as all other lands that could be reached by traveling in those directions).
See also: “Is Rhûn a Part of Middle-earth?”
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