I don’t know whether to call Fayoum (الفيوم) an oasis or not, technically it is, because there is desert between it and the Nile, and a lot of it’s water comes from springs. Fayoum is far too big to be an oasis though. Anyway, whatever it is, Fayoum is about 80 Kms South West of Cairo, and has a huge salt water lake called Lake Qarun. It is mostly an agricultural community, and in the past 30 years, irrigation water from all the farms were redirected to a valley to the South of Fayoum, called Wadi El Rayyan, that valley now has two gigantic fresh water lakes in the middle of the desert. Fayoum also has lots of ancient artifacts and sites such as Madinet Madi, Dar Qarun, and Kom El Atl.
