Empire; the Jews successfully defended themselves from attack and decided to commemorate the occasion through the Festival of Purim (both the fourteenth and the fifteenth of Adar, the twelfth month, are mentioned as its dates in 9:17–19). Neither Esther nor Mordecai appears in extrabiblical historical sources about King Xerxes (in them Xerxes has a wife with a different name), and the book has other improbable claims, such as the existence of 127 provinces in the empire. So it, too, does not appear