The Ziz rules over all other birds and protects the weak and defenseless among them. Some say the Ziz has the body of a lion and head and wings of a bird, while others say that it is just an enormous bird, if there is anything just about that. My grandmother said the Ziz is a giant chicken.

My grandmother had the best tales of the Ziz. In one, it flew a poor but righteous scholar to the garden of a princess. The two fell in love, and he became a prince.

Other tales tell of a time that a Ziz discarded a rotten egg and flooded twenty villages. Rafa Ada bet Mira v’Roni, who was more than 100 years old when I was a child, told us of how she was born soon after the incident, and she could still smell the stink—and the village of her birth was not even flooded. They are incredibly rare, and there has only been one sighting in my lifetime. It caused quite a stir throughout Kahal and Shandai villages. For the sake of human life, this is probably a good thing, as the Ziz has a taste for goats. The sighting only stirred the debate on whether the Ziz has a bird or lion body.

Commentary #

Farmer Zev claimed to see a Ziz saying its wing span covered the sun. I don’t much believe it as no one else noticed. It was probably a cloud in the shape of a bird. -Rosh Rafa Shai