Al-Harizi's prominence is due both to his light, entertaining, and allusive style, and to the variety of his subject matter. His descriptions of nature are more realistic than those generally found in other Spanish Hebrew poets, with a feeling for the rural life and the animal world. He described storms at sea and, with the exception of R. Samuel ha-Nagid, was the only medieval Hebrew poet to describe battle scenes. Al-Harizi wrote in Hebrew at a time when most Jewish men of letters wrote in Arabic.