ZUHAIR [Zuhair ibn Abi Sulma Rabi' a ul-Muzani] (6th century), one of the six great Arabian pre-Islamic poets. Of his life practically nothing is known save that he belonged to a family of poetic power his stepfather, Aus ibn Hajar, his sister, Khansa, and his son, Ka'b ibn Zuhair, were all poets of eminence. He is said to have lived long, and at the age of one hundred to have met Mohammed. His home was in the land of the Ban! Ghatafan. His poems are characterized by their peaceful nature and a sententious moralizing. One of them is contained in the Moallakat.
As a whole his poems have been published by W. Ahlwardt in his The Diwans of the six Ancient Arabic Poets (London, 187o) ; and with the commentary of al-A'lam (died 1083) by Count Landberg in his Primeurs arabes (Leiden, 1889). (G. W. T.) ZUIDER ZEE (Zoi'dur za), a shallow gulf, penetrating far into the northern Netherlands, communicating with the North Sea but almost cut off from it at low water by the Frisian islands (Texel, etc.) and the sandbanks of the Wadden Zee. It
is probable that in the middle ages the coast line to the north of the Zuider Zee was an almost continuous series of dunes, but, before the 14th century the Zuider Zee acquired something of its present form. The greater part of the water-covered area has a depth of less than 15ft. at low water. An area of over 12,000ac. of rich land was reclaimed from Lake Y in the neighbourhood of Amsterdam, at the time of the building of the North Sea ship canal in the middle of the 19th century, by the construction of a sea-dike and locks cutting off Amsterdam from the Zuider Zee. The earliest plans for reclaiming the Zuider Zee date from the 17th century but it was not until 1918 that the sanction of the Netherlands legislature was obtained to the carrying out of a vast scheme of reclamation commenced in 1920. (See COAST PROTEC