תּוֹלְדוֹת
Rav Yitzchak ben Reuven of Barcelona (born 4803/1043), also called al-Bargeloni, was a rav and paytan among the chachmei Sefarad and a contemporary of the Rif. He was born in Barcelona in the middle of the eleventh century and, according to manuscript sources, learned under Rav Chanoch ben Moshe in Cordoba, one of the four captives of Sefer HaKabbalah. He went on to the rabbanut of Denia in the southeast of Spain, a kehillah then strong in trade, in wealth and in mitzvot; there he married the daughter of one of its heads, ibn Alchatosh, and judged its people until his petirah. He was one of five chachamim named Yitzchak spoken of together as those who returned the strength of the Talmud to Sefarad, the others being Rav Yitzchak Albalia, the Maharitz Giat, Rav Yitzchak ben Moshe HaSachni, and the greatest of them, the Rif. The honor in which he was held shows in the plain title later generations gave him: HaRav al-Bargeloni.
At the age of thirty-five, in 4838/1078, he turned Rav Hai Gaon‘s HaMekach VehaMimkar, on buying and selling, from Arabic into Hebrew for the Jews of Spain who had no Arabic. In his introduction he writes that Rav Hai had written in Arabic because lashon hakodesh was not spoken well enough in Bavel, and he takes any error in the rendering upon himself rather than upon the author. He also wrote on the Gemara: the sources point strongly to a commentary on at least part of Masechet Ketubot, and another account speaks of perakim of Ketubot and of Eruvin. Those writings have not survived.
His main work is the Azharot on the order of the count of the mitzvot, opening with the words Eizeh Makom Binah. They are built on the reckoning of the Behag, at times in its own wording, and run to 145 stanzas, each of three lines closed by a pasuk. The kehillot of North Africa took them up for Shavuot, and they entered the rituals of Constantine, Tlemcen, Tunis, Morocco, Algiers and Oran. Rav Yehuda al-Charizi wrote in Tachkemoni that the pesukim were set into them so closely that they seemed engraved by ruach hakodesh. At least four commentaries were written on the Azharot, and two pizmonim of his, Alah Moshe LeRosh Har Sinai and Yom Zeh Horid, stand within them.
במקום שהמסורות חלוקות. Several traditions about him are not firmly established: that Rav Yehuda ben Barzilai al-Bargeloni was his talmid, and that the Ramban descended from him, which the Tashbetz inferred from the way the Ramban refers to him.
רבי יצחק בן ראובן הברצלוני היה רב ופייטן מחכמי ספרד, בן דורו של הרי"ף.
Isaac ben Reuben Albargeloni was a Spanish Talmudist and liturgical poet born in Barcelona, Catalonia. He was a judge in the Denia community, where he became connected with ibn Alḥatosh, likely due to becoming his son-in-law. Among his later descendants was Moses ben Naḥman (Naḥmanides); Judah Albargeloni is said to have been Isaac's pupil. He was one of five prominent contemporaneous scholars named Isaac and the regard in which he was held by his own and succeeding generations is indicated by the fact that he is simply designated "Ha-Rab Albargeloni." He wrote commentaries on various sections of the tractate Ketubot, and at the age of thirty-five (1078) translated, from the Arabic into Hebrew, Hai Gaon's Ha-Miḳḳaḥ weha-Mimkar, on buying and selling. Noteworthy among his liturgical poems are his Azharot, included in the rituals of Constantine, Tlemçen, Tunis, Morocco, Algeria, and Oran.