Rabbi Judah ben Barzillai al-Bargeloni רבי יהודה בן ברזילי הברצלוני
the codifier of Barcelona who preserved the letters of the Geonim
Sefer ha-Ittim is a code of the laws of time: Sabbath, festivals, the new moon. Sefer ha-Dinin, from which Sefer ha-Shetarot was printed, gives model documents—the contracts, bonds and marriage terms as they ran in the Catalonia of his day.
The commentary on Sefer Yetzirah is precious not for its exposition but for its extracts: he quotes the Geonim by the page, and much of what he quotes survives nowhere else. There too he answers the Karaites who charged the Rabbanites with ascribing bodily form to God.
The sources give no years of life, only that he was active at the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth. The window on the ribbon is set by that and by his dispute with Abraham bar Hiyya.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah — extracts from the Geonim preserved nowhere else
Scholarship
- The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) — the window of activity, the books and the dispute with Abraham bar Hiyya
Basis: documents and evidence.