Mediterranean Sea The long artificial Suez Canal in the southeast connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. Large islands in the Mediterranean include Cyprus, Crete, Euboea, Rhodes, Lesbos, Chios, Kefalonia, Corfu, Limnos, Samos, Naxos and Andros in the Eastern Mediterranean; Sicily, Cres, Krk, Brač, Hvar, Pag, Korčula and Malta in the central Mediterranean; Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands: Ibiza, Majorca, and Menorca in the Western Mediterranean. The typical Mediterranean climate has hot, humid, and dry summers and mild, rainy winters. Crops of the region include olives, grapes, oranges, tangerines, and cork. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the
Mediterranean Sea Middle Sea'. In Islamic and older Arabic literature, it was "Baḥr al-Rūm(ī)" ( or }) 'the Sea of the Romans' or 'the Roman Sea'. At first, that name referred to only the Eastern Mediterranean, but it was later extended to the whole Mediterranean. Other Arabic names were "Baḥr al-šām(ī)" () 'the Sea of Syria' and "Baḥr al-Maghrib" () 'the Sea of the West'. In Turkish, it is the "Akdeniz" 'the White Sea'; in Ottoman, ﺁق دكيز, which sometimes means only the Aegean Sea. The origin of the name is not clear, as it is not known in earlier Greek, Byzantine