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Isaac ben Jacob al-Fāsī (1013–1103) is commonly known by the acronym Rif (Rabbi Isaac of Fez). A native of Qalʿat Banī Ḥammād in the central Maghreb (now Algeria), he received the talmudic tradition from R. Ḥananel ben Ḥushiel of Qayrawān, the premier post-gaonic authority in North Africa. This gave him access to the talmudic discourse and exegesis of the gaonic academies of Iraq, the source of the Babylonian Talmud, as well as to the Palestinian Talmud.Al-Fāsī migrated to Al-Andalus around 1078. Soon after the death of its incumbent master, Isaac Ibn Ghiyyāth, he became head of the academy in Lucena. Whereas the talmudic and gaonic yeshivot of Iraq and the Land of Israel functioned in rivalry, presenting the halakha in dialectic and divergent forms, al-Fāsī ’s academy in Lucena attained a level of authority unprecedented in the history of the Diaspora. It became the world center of talmudic activity, training disciples l…