The presence of palygorskite in soils and sediments of the Middle East countries has been widely reported: in Syria (Muir, 1951), Israel (Yaalon, 1955; Barshad et al., 1956; Ravikovitch et al., 1960; Singer, 1971; Singer & Amiel, 1974; Yaalon & Wieder, 1976), Iraq (Al-Rawi et al., 1967; Eswaran & Barzanji, 1974), Lebanon (Lamouroux et al., 1973), Jordan (Wiersma, 1970; Shadfan, 1983; Shadfan & Dixon, 1984; Shadfan et al., 1985) and Saudi Arabia (Aba Husayn & Sayegh, 1977; Elprince et al., 1979; Mashhady et al., 1980; Viani et al., 1983; Lee et al., 1983; Mackenzie et al., 1984; Shadfan & Mashhady, 1985). In Egypt, Elgabaly (1962) indicated the predominance of palygorskite in some of the soils in the western desert and proposed that the mineral had formed from calcareous argillaceous material in a saline lagoon. Hassouba & Shaw (1980) found palygorskite to be a major component of the clay fraction in caliche crusts in the coastal plain of north-western Egypt and considered that the palygorskite had formed authigenically in that environment.