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 or Islamic sources. It may be to contrast with the Black Sea. In Persian, the name was translated as "Baḥr-i Safīd", which was also used in later Ottoman Turkish. It is probably the origin of the colloquial Greek Άσπρη Θάλασσα. Johann Knobloch claims that in Classical Antiquity, cultures in the Levant used colours to refer to the cardinal points: black referred to the north (explaining the name Black Sea), yellow or blue to east, red to south (i.e., the Red Sea), and "white" to west. This would explain both the Turkish "Akdeniz" (White Sea) and the Arab nomenclature described above.