Lake Bardawil is a large, very saline lake in Egypt on the north coast of the Sinai Peninsula

Sinai Peninsula

The Sinai Peninsula or Sinai is a triangular peninsula in Egypt about in area. It is situated between the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and the Red Sea to the south, and is the only part of Egyptian territory located in Asia as opposed to Africa, effectively serving as a land bridge between two...

. The lagoon is shallow (reaching a depth of about 3 metres) and is separated from the Mediterranean Sea by a narrow sandbar. It has Ramsar Convention

Ramsar Convention

The Ramsar Convention is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands, i.e., to stem the progressive encroachment on and loss of wetlands now and in the future, recognizing the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands and their economic, cultural,...

 protected wetland

Wetland

A wetland is an area of land whose soil is saturated with water either permanently or seasonally. Wetlands are categorised by their characteristic vegetation, which is adapted to these unique soil conditions....

s.

Lake Bardawil is about 90 kilometres (55.9 mi) long, and 22 kilometres (13.7 mi) wide (at its widest). It covers an area of about 700 km² (270 m²).

Bardawil is the Arabic version of Baldwin, the name of five Crusader Kings of Jerusalem

Kings of Jerusalem

This is a list of kings of Jerusalem, from 1099 to 1291, as well as claimants to the title up to the present day.-Kings of Jerusalem :...

. The lake lies in an area which, in the Crusader period, was disputed territory between the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem

Kingdom of Jerusalem

The Kingdom of Jerusalem was a Catholic kingdom established in the Levant in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when the last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks, but its history is divided into two distinct periods....

 and Egypt, and as early as Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

 was considered to mark the boundary between Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

 and Egypt. Its marshy edges were Herodotus's Serbonian Bog

Serbonian Bog

Serbonian Bog relates to the lake of Serbonis in Egypt. Because sand blew onto it, the Serbonian Bog had a deceptive appearance of being solid land, but was a bog...

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