BARUCH BEN ISAAC ALBALIA
(1077-1126)
Judge and director of a yeshiva (academy for the study of scriptures) in Cordoba. He was born in Seville, the son of Isaac Albalia. When he was only 17 years old, he moved to Lucena after his father's death, following his father's express wish. The aim was to get Rabbi Isaac Alfasi to abandon the hostility he had long harbored towards his father, and to accept him as a student at Alfasi's academy. He studied there for nine years, together with the also Sevillian Joseph Ibn Migash. After Alfasi's death, Albalia became judge and director of the yeshiva in Cordoba, becoming a great expert in Greco-Arabic philosophy. Among his colleagues were personalities such as Judah Halevi and Moses Ibn Ezra.
As a sign of the importance and influence he achieved among the Hebrew philosophers and Talmudists of the time, several of them dedicated various literary compositions of praise to him. For example, Halevi makes a pun in a poem that says:
In one of Halevi's poems there is a pun:
His name is ‘Baruch’ [blessed], and he, like his name, is blessed, and all who bless themselves with his name, are, in turn, blessed (Divan, ed. by H. Brody, 1 (1935), 120)
