The continent of Zakhara was renowned for its burning deserts and lush jungles, but the seas surrounding its varied coastlines allowed much travel and trade hindered by its harsh interior.
Surrounding seas
The Land of Fate was surrounded by three major seas:
- The Great Sea, or "Bahr al-Kibar", stretched to the north and west, separating Zakhara and Faerûn.
- To the east daring sailors crossed the Foreigners' Sea, or "Bahr al-Ajami", to the distant lands of Kara-Tur.
- To the south Zakhara was bounded by the so-called Crowded Sea, or "Bahr al-Izdiham", characterized by a large number of inhabited as well as unknown islands and crossed by many trading ships.
Interior seas
- Between the cities of Jumlat and I'tiraf, the Crowded Sea narrowed to form the Golden Gulf that separated the League of the Pantheon to the east from its ideological counterpart, the Pearl Cities, to the west.
- To the north, the gulf narrowed again into long and narrow Suq Bay. Zakhara's central Cities of the Heart stretched along its shores, from Golden Huzuz, "the heart of the heart", in the south, to industrious Hiyal in the north. Its narrowest part, located at the height of Wasat in the middle, separated Suq Bay into a Southern and a Northern Quarter.
- From Hiyal to the west, the Al-Tariq Channel ("The Passage") connected Suq Bay to the inland Sea of Caravans.
Together, these interior bodies of water separated the west of Zakhara almost completely from its central and eastern portion, with only a relatively narrow strip of land between Qudra and Liham connecting the regions of the High Desert and the Haunted Lands.