Spain Expels Its Jews
Ferdinand and Isabella end thirteen centuries of Jewish life on the Iberian Peninsula
Quick facts
- Decree signed
- 31 March 1492, Granada
- Deadline to leave or convert
- 31 July 1492
- Estimated Jews expelled/converted
- 40,000 to 200,000
- Issued by
- King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I
What happened
On 31 March 1492, months after completing the Christian reconquest of Granada, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile signed the Alhambra Decree, ordering all Jews in their kingdoms to leave or convert to Christianity by the end of July. The decree's own text states the goal explicitly: to remove Jewish contact with recent converts from Judaism to Christianity, who Spanish authorities feared were continuing to practice Judaism in secret. Jews who stayed past the deadline faced death and confiscation of property; those who left were permitted to take goods but not gold, silver, or coined money. Modern estimates place the number expelled or converted between 40,000 and 200,000 people, out of a Jewish population of roughly 300,000, ending more than a thousand years of continuous Jewish presence in Spain.
Why it matters
The expulsion scattered Sephardi Jews across North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and other parts of Europe, permanently reshaping the geography of Sephardi Jewish life and severing what had been, at its height, one of the most intellectually productive Jewish communities in the world from the land it had inhabited since Roman times.
How we know
The Alhambra Decree survives as an original royal charter, signed by Ferdinand and Isabella and their secretary Juan de Coloma, and it is corroborated by extensive Spanish Inquisition records and Jewish communal accounts of the expulsion from the same period.
Sources
- Center for Holocaust and Human Rights Education, Florida Atlantic University. The Alhambra Decree: Edict of the Expulsion of the Jews of Spain (1492) · Primary source (author-declared)fau.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match).
- National Endowment for the Humanities. "Ornament of the World" and the Jews of Spain · Reputable sourceneh.gov · The domain "neh.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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