Rabbi Yitzchak ben Shlomo Luria Ashkenazi, known as the Ari, the Ari HaKadosh or the Arizal, was born in Jerusalem in 5294 (1534). His father, Rabbi Shlomo, came from the Ashkenazi Luria family; his mother was from a Sephardic family, the Frances. After losing his father as a child, he moved with his mother to Egypt, to the home of her wealthy brother Mordechai Frances, whose daughter he later married.

In Egypt he studied under Rabbi Betzalel Ashkenazi, author of the Shitah Mekubetzet, whose surname he took on out of respect, and under the Radbaz. A few years after his marriage he immersed himself in the Zohar and Kabbalah and lived for a long period in seclusion, according to tradition on the banks of the Nile. Documents from the Cairo Genizah show that he earned his living trading in spices and grain.

In 5330 (1570) he settled in Safed with his wife and two daughters. There he briefly encountered the Ramak, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, who died soon afterwards, and gathered a circle of disciples, the "Gurei HaAri", the foremost of whom was Rabbi Chaim Vital, to whom he transmitted the core of his teaching.

His system, Lurianic Kabbalah, built on concepts such as tzimtzum and the breaking of the vessels, shaped Jewish mysticism so deeply that Kabbalah is divided into the periods before and after the Ari; Chassidut grew out of it. He wrote almost nothing himself: his teachings were preserved in the writings of Rabbi Chaim Vital, above all Etz Chaim. He did compose three Aramaic songs for the Shabbat meals, bearing his name in acrostic: Azamer Bishvachin, Asader Lisudata and Bnei Heichala.

He passed away on 5 Av 5332 (July 1572), aged 38, in the great epidemic that struck the Galilee, and is buried in the Old Cemetery of Safed, near the Ramak, Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz and other sages of the city.