On 31 March 1492, the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella signed the Edict of Granada, ordering the expulsion of all Jews from Spain.
On 31 March 1492, within the walls of the fortress of the Alhambra in Granada, the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella signed the Edict of Expulsion, only a few weeks after the fall of the last Muslim kingdom in Spain. This decree ordered all unconverted Jews to leave the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon before 31 July 1492, on pain of death. The official motive was to prevent Jews from influencing the conversos (converted Jews) to return to Judaism — an obsession of the Spanish Inquisition, established in 1478. The Jews were placed before a heartbreaking choice: conversion to Christianity or exile, with a ban on taking out gold, silver or precious stones.
Historians estimate that between 40,000 and 100,000 Jews chose exile, while an even greater number — perhaps 200,000 — converted. The roads of exile led the Spanish Jews toward Portugal (where they were expelled again in 1497), the Ottoman Empire (Constantinople, Salonika, Smyrna), Northern Italy (Livorno, Rome) and the Maghreb (Fès, Tlemcen, Tunis). Rav Shlomo Encaoua of Toledo is mentioned as one of those who oversaw the departure of the Toledan community, organizing the sale of communal property and the protection of the Torah scrolls during the journey.
The expulsion of 1492 created the Sephardic diaspora, one of the vastest dispersions in Jewish history. The word 'Sepharad', the Hebrew term for Spain, became the identity marker of all the descendants of the exiles. The Sephardic communities spread out around the Mediterranean, carrying with them their culture, their traditions, the Judeo-Spanish language (Ladino) and a literary corpus of exceptional richness. For the Encaoua, the expulsion had a specific consequence: the Toledan branch joined the branches already established in the Maghreb for a century (thanks to Éphraïm's settlement in Tlemcen in 1391), strengthening the family network across North Africa.
The chronicle of Rui de Pina, historiographer of King Manuel I of Portugal, explicitly mentions 'the family of the Enqahos, men of great learning' among the Jews who were forced to convert in Portugal in 1497. Unlike Spain, Portugal did not allow the choice of exile: all the Jews were converted by force. Some Encaoua in Portugal practiced crypto-Judaism — secretly maintaining Jewish rites while displaying a Christian façade — before fleeing toward the Maghreb or the Ottoman Empire in the following decades. The inquisitorial archives of Lisbon preserve traces of this underground resistance, attesting that the name Encaoua remained associated with Jewish scholarship even in a context of extreme persecution.
The Spanish expulsion redraws the geography of Mediterranean Judaism. MMJMM maps the six host communities in the Maghreb (Tlemcen, Oran, Fès, Tétouan, Salé) and the Italian refuge of Livorno, along with the accounts that arose from them.