ר׳ הלל בן אליקים

ר׳ הלל בן אליקים, conventionally mapped here to c. 1150–1200, was a Byzantine Jewish scholar known to later learning as רבנו הלל. Very little personal biography survives: no town, teachers, family details or exact dates can responsibly be recovered. His intellectual location is nevertheless clear. He composed extensive Hebrew commentaries on the halakhic midrashim ספרא to Leviticus and ספרי to Numbers and Deuteronomy, and material is also associated with his treatment of other Palestinian midrashic collections. The commentaries explain language, legal argument and variant traditions, frequently drawing on ר׳ שלמה יצחקי and ר׳ יצחק בן מלכי־צדק. Their use of northern European and Byzantine learning documents the eastward transmission of the commentary of ר׳ שלמה יצחקי and illuminates twelfth-century Byzantine rabbinic culture. The works circulated principally in manuscript and were only published in modern critical or semi-critical editions; therefore the map dates them approximately to their medieval composition rather than to twentieth-century printing. This restrained record replaces unsupported claims that he travelled to Jerusalem or held known offices in Athens.