Isaac Ben Samuel of Acre - View of The Zohar

View of The Zohar

Isaac ben Samuel was at Acre when that town was taken by Al-Ashraf Khalil, and was thrown into prison with many of his coreligionists, but escaped the massacre, and in 1305 went to Spain. Abraham Zacuto states in his Yuḥasin, that Moses de Leon discovered the Zohar in the time of Isaac of Acre.

However, Isaac doubted the authenticity of the Zohar, not having heard of it in the Holy Land, and made inquiries about it of Naḥmanides' pupils, without, however, any satisfactory result. When Isaac met Moses of Leon at Valladolid, the latter took an oath that he had a copy of the Zohar written by Shimon bar Yochai himself in his house at Ávila. However, de Leon died before he could return to Ávila, and Isaac, more than ever desirous of obtaining the truth, consulted at Ávila a man named David Rafan.

Rafan told Isaac that Moses of Leon's wife and daughter had revealed to the wife of a certain R. Joseph the fact that Moses of Leon had written the book himself. Historian Heinrich Graetz takes this story as historical, but Landauer shows it to be apocryphal and demonstrates that the Zohar was discovered much later.