Vidal of Tolosa

Vidal of Tolosa, alternate spelling Vidal de Toulouse (Hebrew: וידאל די טולושא), was a Spanish rabbi and scholar of the late 14th century, and is often referred to by the sobriquet, Harav Ha-Maggid, or the Maggid Mishneh, named for his magnum opus by that name.

Biography From his name it would appear that his origin was a place called Tolosa. The Hida and others wrote that he was from Tolosa, Spain; while modern scholar Israel Netanel Rubin placed his origin at Toulouse. He lived in Villefranche-de-Conflent and later in Barcelona, where he met Nissim of Gerona and published Maggid Mishneh. From Joseph Caro's preface to his Kesef Mishneh it appears that Vidal was a personal friend of Nissim of Gerona.

Before the twentieth century, the commentary was never published separately, but only together with the Mishneh Torah (first at Constantinople, 1509).

Other works According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Vidal's second work was a commentary in Arabic on a work by Al-Ghazali that is known in Hebrew as To'elet ha-Higgayon (Hebrew: ). This commentary was translated into Hebrew by Moses ben Joshua of Narbonne, and as of 1906 was extant in manuscript in the Library of the Vatican. However, according to modern scholar Israel Netanel Rubin, Vidal did not actually write To'elet ha-Higgayon and it was falsely attributed to him due to a similarity in the name of the translator. Additionally, the philosophy in the work seems to be counter what historians think Vidal would believe based on his work Maggid Mishneh.