Just then, Haman appears, to ask the King to hang Mordechai, but before he can make this request, King Ahasuerus asks Haman what should be done for the man that the king wishes to honor.

The throne then passed to the Persians, who their king Darius was the first to sit successfully on Solomon's throne since his death, and after that the throne passed into the possession of the Greeks and Ahasuerus.

Just then, Haman appears, and King Ahasuerus asks him what should be done for the man that the King wishes to honor.

Ahasuerus orders the queen Vashti to display her beauty before the guests.

She orders Mordechai to have all Jews fast for three days together with her, and on the third day she goes to Ahasuerus, who stretches out his sceptre to her which shows that she is not to be punished.

At this feast Ahasuerus gets thoroughly drunk and, at the prompting of his courtiers, orders his wife Vashti to display her beauty before the nobles and people wearing her royal crown.

Ahasuerus instead orders Haman hanged on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.

Ahasuerus, ruler of a massive Persian empire, holds a lavish party, initially for his court and dignitaries and afterwards for all inhabitants of the capital city Shushan.

Worried all women will learn from this, Ahasuerus removes her as queen and has a royal decree sent across the empire that men should be the ruler of their households and should speak their own native tongue.

Queen Esther declared a three-day fast for all the Jews prior to risking her life in visiting King Ahasuerus uninvited ( Esther ).

According to the Book of Esther, in the Hebrew Bible, Haman, royal vizier to King Ahasuerus ( presumed to be Xerxes I of Persia ), planned to kill all the Jews in the empire, but his plans were foiled by Mordecai and his adopted daughter Queen Esther.

Esther discovers what has transpired ; she requests that all Jews of Shushan fast and pray for three days together with her, and on the third day she seeks an audience with Ahasuerus, during which she invites him to a feast in the company of Haman.

Ahasuerus takes Memucan's advice, and sends letters to all of the provinces that men should dominate in their households.

Haman attempts to convince Ahasuerus to order the killing of Mordecai and all the Jews of the lands he ruled.

When " young virgins " were sought, she was brought into the presence of King Ahasuerus and was made queen in the place of the exiled queen Vashti.

The view that it was Mordecai would be consistent with the identification of Ahasuerus with Cyaxares.

He is alternatively identified, together with the Ahasuerus of the Book of Tobit, as Cyaxares I, said to be the father of Astyages.

One view is that the description of Ahasuerus as the " father " of Darius the Mede should be understood in the broader sense of " forebear " or " ancestor.

In some versions of the legend of the Wandering Jew, his true name is held to be " Ahasuerus.

The novel Overburdened with Evil ( 1988 ) by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky involves a character in modern setting who turns out to be Ahasuerus, identified at the same time in a subplot with John the Divine.

He places events during the rule of Ardashir Bahman ( Artaxerxes II ), but confuses him with Ardashir al-Tawil al-Ba ( Artaxerxes I ), while assuming Ahasuerus to be the name of a co-ruler.

An illustration from the 12th century Hortus deliciarum from Alsace may be the earliest depiction of a pretzel, shown at a banquet with Esther | Queen Esther and Ahasuerus | King Ahasuerus

As Artaxerxes is believed to be the inspiration for King Ahasuerus in the story of Purim, Artabanus may have been the inspiration for Haman in the same story.

The name Ahasuerus is equivalent to Xerxes, both deriving from the Persian Khshayārsha, thus Ahasuerus is usually identified as Xerxes I ( 486-465 BCE ), though Ahasuerus is identified as Artaxerxes in the later Greek version of Esther ( as well as by Josephus, the Jewish commentary Esther Rabbah, the Ethiopic translation and the Christian theologian Bar-Hebraeus who identified him more precisely as Artaxerxes II ).

He obtains Ahasuerus ' permission to execute this plan, against payment of ten thousand talents of silver ( which the King declines to accept and rather allows him to execute his plan on principle ), and he casts lots to choose the date on which to do this — the thirteenth of the month of Adar.

That night, Ahasuerus suffers from insomnia, and when the court records are read to him to help him sleep, he learns of the services rendered by Mordechai in the previous plot against his life.

Based on the view that the Ahasuerus of the Book of Tobit is identical with that of the Book of Esther, some have also identified him as Nebuchadnezzar's ally Cyaxares ( ruled 625 – 585 BCE ).

Jewish tradition regards him as the same Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther ; the Ethiopic text calls him Arťeksis, as it does the above figure in Esther.

In some versions of the apocryphal or deuterocanonical Book of Tobit, Ahasuerus is given as the name of an associate of Nebuchadnezzar, who together with him, destroyed Nineveh just before Tobit's death.

That night, Ahasuerus suffers from insomnia, and when the court's daily records are read to him to help him fall asleep, he learns of the services rendered by Mordecai in the earlier plot against his life.

Jewish tradition relates that Esther was the mother of a King Darius and so some try to identify Ahasuerus with Artaxerxes I and Esther with Kosmartydene.

But bethink ye, that only one thing can redeem you from your curse ; the redemption of Ahasuerus — Going under!

Obtaining Ahasuerus ' permission and funds to execute this plan, he casts lots (" purim ") to choose the date on which to do this – the thirteenth of the month of Adar.

According to the Bible, she was a Jewish queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus.

Memucan encourages Ahasuerus to dismiss Vashti and find another queen.

Ahasuerus subsequently chooses Esther as his queen to replace Vashti.

Wilson, who identified Ahasuerus with Xerxes I and Vashti with Amestris, suggested that both " Amestris " and " Esther " derived from Akkadian Ammi-Ishtar or Ummi-Ishtar.

The Book of Esther begins with a six-month ( 180 day ) drinking feast given by King Ahasuerus, for the army of Persia and Media, for the civil servants and princes in the 127 provinces of his kingdom, at the conclusion of which a seven-day drinking feast for the inhabitants of Shushan ( Susa ), rich and poor, with a separate drinking feast for the women organised by the Queen Vashti in the pavilion of the Royal courtyard.

They include a scene of King Ahasuerus rejecting Vashti in favor of Esther, the brothers selling Joseph into slavery in Egypt, and Moses raising up the nehushtan ( bronze serpent ) in the wilderness.

Queen Vashti ( Hebrew: ושתי, Persian: و َ شتی, Koine Greek: Αστιν, Astin ) is the first wife of King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther, a book included in the Tanakh ( Hebrew Bible ) and read on the Jewish holiday of Purim.

In the Book of Esther, Vashti is the wife of King Ahasuerus.

Upon the discovery of the equivalence of the names Ahasuerus and Xerxes, Bible commentators attempted to identify Ahasuerus with Xerxes I of Persia and Vashti with a wife named Amestris mentioned by Herodotus.

According to the Midrashic account, Vashti was a savvy politician, and the ladies ' banquet that she held in parallel to Ahasuerus ' banquet represented an astute political maneuver.

* Lascelles Abercrombie ( 1881 – 1938 ), a British poet also known as " The Georgian Laureate ," wrote a 40-page poem entitled " Vashti " which contains the famous lines, spoken by Ahasuerus to Vashti, on women's beauty:

Given the similarity of names, and the parallel identification of Ahasuerus with her husband Xerxes I, it is possible that Amestris is the Biblical Vashti.

Wilson, who identified Ahasuerus with Xerxes I and Vashti with Amestris, suggested that both " Amestris " and " Esther " derived from Akkadian words Ammi-Ishtar or Ummi-Ishtar.

This farfetched pilpulism had many followers, some of whom asserted that Ahasuerus concurred in the decision of Maimonides, and that Vashti coincided with the opinion of RaBaD.

The Midrash Tanchuma describes the fall of Babylon as described in Daniel and adds to the narrative Darius taking Vashti, the daughter of Belshazzar, as a wife for his son Ahasuerus.