The 'Amude Golah [Pillars of Exile] of R. Isaac of Corbeil was completed circa 1278 just a few years prior to the author's death in the spring of 1280. This accessible halakhic work, written with the intent of reaching a broad reading audience, was extremely popular during the later Middle Ages as the numerous extant manuscripts can attest (close to 200 mss.). With time the work became known as the Sefer Mitsvot Katan [The Short Book of Commandments] or Semak. Shortly following its distribution the author's younger contemporary and even more famous townsman, R. Peretz of Corbeil, appended his scholarly glosses to the Semak. Almost all surviving manuscripts of the work include these learned glosses.
One of the most difficult textual problems that one encounters in studying Isaac of Corbeil's work relates to Peretz's glosses. Copyists of the work from the 13th century onwards had great difficulty in differentiating between Isaac's original work and the later material added by Peretz. This led to situations where Peretz comments were frequently integrated into the body of the work while at times Isaacs' thoughts were relegated to the glosses. The task of reconstructing Isaac's original work became feasible only with the discovery of the version found in British Library Add. 11639 (1056 in Margoliouth Catalogue) known as the Northern French Hebrew Miscellany (reproduced here from the Falter Facsimile Editions).
This late thirteenth-century manuscript was copied by a certain Benjamin the Scribe. The colophon lacks an exact date however Malachi Beit-Arie has argued, based on internal calendar evidence, that the 746 page manuscript was copied during the years 1279
