Rabbi Moshe ha-Darshan of Narbonne רבי משה הדרשן מנרבונה

Provence learned Torah before Spain and France knew of it: Narbonne was an old community with a school of its own, and in the eleventh century it was headed by Rabbi Moshe, called ha-Darshan—the expounder.

His collection has not survived. We know it otherwise: in his Torah commentary Rashi writes again and again "the foundation of Rabbi Moshe ha-Darshan"—and gives the interpretation. That is how books that no longer exist survive: in the citations of those who read them. Echoes of the same circle are heard in Bereshit Rabbati, a collection that came out of his school.

Behind him stands a whole family: his son Yehuda, grandsons, students. Narbonne handed its learning down through households, and when a century later Rabbi Avraham ben Yitzchak wrote the Sefer ha-Eshkol there, he stood on that ground rather than starting from nothing.