The nominate race breeds in Iberian Peninsula , Northwest Africa, the Canary Islands, Turkey, Iran, Cyprus and Israel.

The black-bellied sandgrouse was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.

This gregarious species breeds on dry open plains and similar habitats, but unlike the pin-tailed sandgrouse, it avoids areas completely lacking in vegetation.

Fossils of the black-bellied sandgrouse are known from the Nefud Desert of Saudi Arabia and date back to the Middle Pleistocene, about 500,000 BP.

[7] In the Chagatai language memoir Baburnama, the Mughal emperor Babur calls the Pterocles orientalis arenarius the qīl-qūyirūgh "horse-tail" and describing it as the "bāghrī qarā of Transoxiana".