ALFASI, YITSḤAQ BEN YAʿAQOV (1013–1103), also known by the acronym RIF (Rabbi Yitsḥaq al-Faasi); North African–Spanish Talmudist. Alfasi spent the majority of his life in North Africa, where he headed the school in Fez (Fas in Arabic, hence his name). At the age of seventy-five he was forced by political intrigues to leave for Spain, where he presided over the school at Lucena. Despite the hostility of some native scholars, the aged Alfasi gained wide recognition in his new home, attracted many disciples (among them the brilliant Yosef ibn Migash, his successor at Lucena), and was described by the twelfth-century historian Avraham ibn Daud as the leading scholar of his time. Alfasi's exposure to Spanish Jewry came at the end of his long life; he was not...