A good deal of effort and ingenuity has been devoted to the problem of establishing the historical identity of Palṭiel, an enigmatic figure in the eleventhcentury chronicle of Ahima'as. In this work, the author relates what purports to be the history of his family over the previous two centuries and gives pride of place to one Palṭiel ben Shefaṭyah, an astrologer who rose to high office under the Fṭimid Caliph al-Mu'izz in Tunisia and Egypt. The family, according to Ahima'aṣ, had lived in Oria, in southern Italy, for generations. Then came the Fṭimid raids on the Italian mainland. With al-Mu'izz as their commander, 'they devastated the entire province of Calabria, and reached Oria, on the borders of Apulia; they besieged it, defeated all its forces; so that the city was