Ahimaaz ben Paltiel
Ahimaaz ben Paltiel (; 1017–1060) was a Graeco-Italian liturgical poet and author of a family chronicle. Very little is known about his life. He came from a family some of whose members are well known in Jewish literature as scholars and poets; for example, Shefatya ben Amitai, Hananiel ben Amittai, and his nephew Amittai ben Shephatiah. Ahimaaz had two sons, Paltiel and Samuel. The family tree of this clan is given by Ahimaaz in his Chronicle: Benjamin of Tudela mentions an Ahimaaz ben Paltiel in Amalfi in southern Italy, in the year 1162 (see his Travels, ed. Asher, i. 13, 14). This may well have been a descendant of his earlier namesake; for it is known that two brothers of the grandfather of Ahimaaz ben Paltiel were sent with presents to Paltiel by the prince of Amalfi. In a list of twenty-two selihah (elegiac) poets (Italy, fifteenth century?), Ahimaaz ben Paltiel is mentioned as the author of two poems, and a Mahzor of the Roman rite attributes to him a selihah for the Fast of Esther. Chronicle of Ahimaaz Ahimaaz is best known as the compiler of the Chronicle, composed in 1054, which, though intended merely to glorify his immediate ancestors, gives much important information regarding the history of the early Jewish settlements in such towns as Oria, Bari, Otranto, Gaeta, Benevento, Capua, Amalfi, in southern Italy, and Pavia in northern Italy. Written about one hundred years before Abraham ibn Daud, it covers a period (850–1054) about which little is known; the only information hitherto having been obtained from a few inscriptions and from notices in the works of Shabbetai Donolo, who also was a native of Oria. Only one manuscript of the Chronicle is known to exist; it is in the library of the cathedral at Toledo, Spain. It bears the title Sefer Yuhasin (Book of Genealogies) and is written in the peculiar rhymed prose which the Arab al-Hamadani had, in the Maqama, brought into prominence fifty years before Ahimaaz, and which Hariri perfected fifty years after him: the same style that in Hebrew literature was affected by Judah al-Harizi and Immanuel of Rome. According to the traditions preserved by Ahimaaz, his family had its origin among the captives whom Titus brought to Italy after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans. The first person he mentions is Amittai of Oria, whom he calls sabbar and payyat, a man versed in Talmudic halakha and a writer of liturgical poetry. The Chronicle describes Aaron of Babylon, the reputed teacher of Kalonymus of Lucca; also through an account by Rabbi Silano additional information is gleaned about the Jewish community of Venosa, some epitaphs from which place had previously been published by G. J. Ascoli. Basil I atrocities Of the sons of Amittai, the Chronicle dwells especially upon Shefatya, one of the earliest and most prolific liturgical poets (about 850–860), and gives some reliable data on the persecutions which the Byzantine Jews had to suffer under Basil I; on