"Esarhaddon, King of Assyria" ("Ассирийский царь Асархадон") is a short story by Leo Tolstoy written in 1903.
Tolstoy wrote it as part of an anthology dedicated to the victims of the Kishinev pogrom in Russia, with all of the proceeds going to a relief fund.
According to book reviewers in 1903, the story is about the king Esarhaddon, who abuses his subjects and beheads the warriors of his enemies.
Then a prophet visits him, and is able to force him to live through the entire life of one of the subjects that the king has oppressed.
[8] Tolstoy was clearly inspired by these events, as the story of Esarhaddon begins with a king who "had conquered the kingdom of King Lailie, [and] had destroyed and burnt the towns..." Sholem Aleichem would afterwards write the material that formed the basis of Fiddler on the Roof.