Eastern folklore tells of a giant bird capable of carrying elephants. They call this huge, island-sized bird rokh (Arabic: رُخّ, rukh) or the elephant bird. Initially, she lived on Mount Kaf, in the territory of modern Pakistan, in later myths these birds lived in Madagascar, in a valley, the bottom of which was covered with precious stones. Also in the Middle East, its area was usually considered the borders of China, and in China itself - Madagascar and the adjacent islands.
Until the 17th century, the island of Madagascar was inhabited by giant birds of the epyornis family. Like ostriches, they did not fly, so the visiting Arabs could take an adult epyornis weighing up to 500 kg and growing up to 3 meters for a freshly hatched chick of a much larger, flying bird. Aepyornis eggs served as bottles for storing water.
Huge, with a wingspan of 15 m, toothy beak and saber claws, the bird could feed on adult elephants and raise a rock.
It was first mentioned in the 10th century in the "Miracles of India" by a Persian author named Buzurg-ibn-Shahriyar. Al-Biruni, without naming the giant bird by name, is skeptical about being seen near the Chinese border. The great traveler Ibn Battuta writes that on the way to China, he personally observed how a mountain fluttered from the surface of the sea - it was a "rokh" bird. Finally, the most famous description of the bird is contained in The Thousand and One Nights: during the fifth voyage of Sinbad the sailor, the Rukh bird, in revenge for the destruction of its egg, exterminates an entire ship with sailors.
The wandering rabbi Benjamin of Tudel reported about the giant inhabitant of the Arab seas. He was told that, being thrown by a storm on an uninhabited island, sailors watched for huge winged griffins, grabbing at which they reached the mainland. At first, Marco Polo also mistook the roc bird for a griffin, a traditional character in European folklore. From his message it follows that Arab sailors avoided the environs of Madagascar, for this strange creature was raging there. In appearance, the birds resembled an eagle, only much larger in size; they were so huge and powerful that they seized the elephant with their paws and lifted it into the air, and when they lifted it, threw it on the ground to kill it and then peck it to the bone. People who saw this bird claimed that its wings in a spread reach from edge to edge sixteen steps,and the feathers are eight steps in length and correspondingly wide.
According to Marco Polo, Kublai Khan sent his people to the west of the Indian Ocean to inquire about the existence and habits of the miracle bird, and they brought him the feather of the Rukh bird. Modern commentators tend to think of this "feather" as a branch of the wine palm, which grows in abundance in Madagascar. As the geographical knowledge of Europeans expanded, the existence of the Rukh bird was in the 17th century. put into serious doubt.
Researchers of folklore tend to produce the Arabian bird Rukh either from the Persian simurgh, or from the Indian Garuda, which in the Mahabharata and Ramayana is depicted carrying an elephant in its claws fighting with a turtle. Perhaps, the bird of paradise Ziz, known according to Jewish beliefs, should be referred to the same group of fabulous creatures.