It is the size of the United States and the hottest place on earth. It has seen caravans of up to 12,000 camels lumber from oasis to oasis along ancient trade routes. It has witnessed the journey of ten million slaves from West Africa to the Mediterranean. Its sands have hosted the tanks of Rommel and Patton. Its modern nations are tinderboxes of high-tension, oil-fueled politics. A certain mystique lingers in the very name... It is a haunting and hostile arena with a past as captivating as its landscape. In this desert blanketing eleven nations in Northern Africa, nature has crafted a world of mesmerizing desolation. And across its scorching sands, from the Stone Age to the 21st century, humanity has dared to carve history. Here, 40,000 Persian warriors were swallowed by a titanic sandstorm kings led caravans of 30,000 bearing riches beyond imagining Roman death squads exterminated the citizens of the Empire's most bitter rival a brash American led the Marines on a perilous mission "to the shores of Tripoli" and the misfits of the Foreign Legion forged a legend in last stands and lost causes. Our cameras explore a land of mirage and myth from a mountain fortress of ancient freedom fighters to a vast stadium filled with gladiators gore to the vibrant chaos of a camel auction to the fabled metropolis of Timbuktu. Historians chronicle how a devastating climate change turned a lush savanna into the world's harshest desert how a charismatic Saharan priestess led her people in a desperate war of resistance against Arab invaders how slaves from Africa's interior perished during nightmarish marches in the sweltering heat and how the German army's brilliant tactician Erwin Rommel bedeviled British forces in the desert during World War II.

(92 minutes)

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