thumb|upright=1.3|Hamada plateau at [[Tademaït, Algeria. Photograph by French explorer Fernand Foureau during his trans-Saharan journey in 1890.]]
thumb|Hamada in the interior of the Cape Verde island of [[Boa Vista, Cape Verde|Boa Vista.]]
thumb|Hamada desert near the [[Hoggar Mountains in Algeria.]]
thumb|Cyclists ride over hamada to the [[Erg Chebbi dunes, Morocco.]]
A hamada (,<!-- Please bring up any changes to the Arabic script on the talk page before changing it on this page --> ) is a type of desert landscape consisting of high, largely barren, hard rocky (basalt) plateaus, where most of the sand has been removed by deflation. The majority of the Sahara is hamada. Other examples are Negev desert in Israel and the in Algeria.
Related landforms
Hamada is related to desert pavement (known variously as reg, serir, gibber, or saï), which occurs as stony plains or depressions covered with gravels or boulders rather than as highland plateaus.