Isaac Alfasi's 11th-century Talmud digest largely replaced the canonized Talmud in a broad circle of users. This is largely due to the change in the economics of book production that served scholars far from the institutions that produced the oral Talmud. Employing a combination of universal authority and a well-designed abridgement formula, Hilḵot Alfasi suited the Talmud for the written media.

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Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi (1013-1103) was commonly known by the acronym Rif (Rabbi Isaac of Fez). A native of Qal'at Beni Hammad in North Africa, he studied Talmud …