ר׳ יצחק בן משה מווינה

ר׳ יצחק בן משה מווינה (c.1180–c.1260), called the אור זרוע, was a travelling Ashkenazi halakhist who transmitted French and Rhineland Talmudic learning into Austria and the Slavic lands. Probably born in Bohemia, he studied first with Bohemian scholars and then travelled through Regensburg, Paris, Provins, Worms, Speyer, and Würzburg. His teachers included ר׳ יהודה החסיד, ר׳ יהודה בן יצחק שירליאון, ר׳ אלעזר מוורמייזא, ר׳ שמחה משפיירא, and ר׳ אליעזר בן יואל הלוי. At Würzburg he headed an academy and taught ר׳ מאיר בן ברוך מרוטנבורג. He later served in Vienna as אב בית דין and ראש ישיבה, while maintaining correspondence across France, Italy, Austria, and Bohemia. His אור זרוע combines legal decisions with their Talmudic arguments, responsa, biblical interpretation, communal custom, and first-hand notices of medieval Jewish life, including persecution and legal disabilities. Its Bohemian glosses also preserve evidence for Jewish use of Slavic languages. The chronological sources conflict: some place his death around 1250, while the traditional dating of the work and his later activity extends to about 1260 or 1270. This map adopts c.1260 transparently. No authentic portrait survives.