Tatooine/Legends

Tatooine was a desert world in a binary star system, inhabited by poor locals who mostly farmed moisture for a living. It was discovered in 5,000 BBY by spacers. The planet was the site of repeated and failed attempts at colonization. During much of the lifespan of the Old Republic, it was ruled for a long period by the Hutts, being beyond the reach of the Republic. After the fall of the Republic, the Galactic Empire established a token presence on Tatooine, but the crime lord Jabba the Hutt still retained de facto control of the planet.

Tatooine had several sizable settlements, the largest of which was the spaceport Mos Eisley, widely known for its rough-and-tumble nature and vast criminal underworld. Other settlements included Bestine (the nominal capital of the planet, where the Empire's government was located), Anchorhead, Tosche Station, Mos Entha, Mos Osnoe, Wayfar (near Jabba's Palace), and Mos Espa, home of a sector-famous podracing track.

Notable geological features included the Dune Sea, an enormous desert, and the Jundland Wastes, a rocky region. Despite the planet's extreme aridity, some forms of life thrived on Tatooine, including the womp rat, the eopie, the bantha, and the enormous, fearsome krayt dragon.

Tatooine was also home to two apparently native sentient bipedal species: Jawas, pygmy-like mechanical scavengers, and Sandpeople, who were mysterious, reclusive, and extremely hostile to outsiders. Both races wore fully-concealing robes that kept their true forms hidden from outsiders.

Tatooine was once a member world of the Rakatan Infinite Empire. It once had large oceans and a world-spanning jungle. This biosphere was destroyed by an orbital bombardment by the Rakata that "glassed" (that is, fused the silica in the soil into glass, which then broke up over time into sand) the planet and boiled its oceans away.

Intelligent Life Forms

 * Humans - Settlers
 * Jawas - Scavengers
 * Sandpeople - Scavengers

Flora
None known.

Fauna

 * Banthas
 * Dewbacks
 * Eopies
 * Krayt dragons
 * Rontos
 * Sarlacci
 * Womp Rats
 * Wraids

Behind the Scenes
In George Lucas's Star Wars saga, Tatooine is the home planet of the Skywalker family and the setting for much of the action in the saga's films (as well as several of the novels and other pieces of written fiction). The planet is not actually named in ANH; according to Lucas he used the name Utapau in the script, but eventually named it retrospectively after the movie's desert location, Tataouine (French spelling) in Tunisia.

Some critics have seen Lucas's use of a desert planet as excessively derivative of Frank Herbert's Arrakis in the Dune series of novels.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
 * Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
 * Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
 * Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina
 * Tales from Jabba's Palace
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
 * Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided