יצחק אלבאליה

Rabbi Yitzchak ben Baruch Albalia, Isaac Albalia, יצחק אלבאליה (1035–1094), was a rishon of Spain, a Talmudist who was also a mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and who served at the court of Al-Mu’tamid, king of Seville. He was born in Cordoba in the month of Iyar to Rabbi Baruch, of a family counted among the oldest in Spanish Jewry. By family tradition its founder was exiled to Spain by Titus at the destruction of the Second Beit HaMikdash, because he knew the craft of embroidering parochot for the Mikdash and the governor of Spain asked for him.

His first teacher was a sage named Rabbi Perigors. He then went to the academy of Lucena, where he became a close friend of Rabbi Meir ibn Migash, the father of Rabbi Yosef ibn Migash, and afterward he settled in Granada. He also learned Torah for several years under Rabbi Shmuel HaNagid until the Nagid’s passing, and that he remained a close friend of the Nagid’s son, Rabbi Yehosef HaNagid, who became his patron. When he was barely thirty he began to write Kupat HaRochlim, a commentary on the Talmud, and in 1065 he dedicated to Rabbi Yehosef his Machberet Sod HaIbbur, a work on the principles of the Jewish calendar. Rabbi Moshe ibn Ezra describes him as a poet and a master of rhetoric as well.

After Rabbi Yehosef was murdered in the Granada massacre of 1066, Albalia fled to Cordoba, where he came to know the prince Al-Mu’tamid ibn Abbad. When Al-Mu’tamid took the throne of Seville in May 1069 he appointed him court astronomer and astrologer, and he rose to be the king’s adviser, a position he used for the good of his people, until he was appointed rav of southern Spain. He then moved to Seville, and there he taught Rabbi Yosef ibn Migash. He also wrote a large work explaining the halachot of the Talmud that are not spelled out in the text.

In his last years a bitter dispute broke out between him and Rabbi Yitzchak Alfasi, the Rif. Before his passing he called his son, Rabbi Baruch ben Yitzchak ibn Albalia, then seventeen years old, and charged him to go and make peace with the Rif and to learn Torah from him, which the son did. He was niftar in Granada in Nissan 4854 (1094), before reaching the age of fifty-nine, and was buried in Cordoba.

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