In the year 5252 (1492 CE), Ferdinand, the king of Spain (see above 172), and his wife Isabella waged war against the Ishmaelites in Grenada and conquered it. And upon their return, they commanded all of the Jews of his kingdom within a short period to leave their lands, Castile, Navarre, Catalonia, Aragon, Grenada, and Sicily. And the residents of Toledo said that they were not present at the death of the [Christian] messiah. As it is written by a very early governor on a large stone in the city square that the Jews in Toledo did not leave from there at the time of the building of the second temple, such that they were not present at his death, but they were not allowed any excuse. 600,000 [Jews] left from there, and their money was worth more than 30,000 ducats, as testified to by Abarbanel in his book, Mayaanei HaYeshuah. And it all went to the treasury. Under great pressure for their lives, they left in whatever boats they could find to Africa, Asia, and the lands of Greece and [Asia Minor]. And all of the [punishments found in the Biblical] rebukes were fulfilled upon them. And I will recount one of countless things that happened to them: One of them was scattered to one of the islands of the sea and had a very old father who was overwhelmed by hunger, since they had not eaten for three days. So the son was moved by mercy for his father — since they had neither bread nor clothing, as they remained naked and bare [alluding to Ezekiel 16:7], he took his only young son, walked to the nearby city, and sold the child to the baker for bread to revive the old man. But when he returned to his father with the bread, he found him fallen dead. So he tore his clothes and returned to the baker with the bread to take back his son, but [the baker] did not want to return the youth to him. So the Jew cried out in a mighty voice for his son, but there was no one to save him. And another story like this that happened to one of the exiles: There was an old man and an old woman, and [their] daughter was very beautiful; they had no place to sleep and stayed in the field during the night. So in the middle of the night, a robber came and raped the maiden and stole all of their things. But within the hour, the robber returned and killed the maiden, saying that lest she became pregnant from him, he did not want his offspring to remain among the Jews. And there were many thousands and tens of thousands like these [stories] of what happened to the exiles. You will find some of them in the preface of [R. Yehudah] Chayat to his commentary on Marakhet Elokut, in Shevet Yehudah, and in Abarbanel's introduction to the book of Kings. And you should know that the portion that sought to go to Portugal was about 300,000. But the Jews [already living there] made efforts with the king not to allow them to enter there, because this kingdom was too small to absorb such an amount of poor people. And when Don Yosef ben Yichayah, the grandfather of the Gaon, my master, my father, heard, he let out a great shout about it, "How can we lock the gates of salvation to the poor, etc." But they did not listen to his voice. So the exiles had to make a deal with the king that he allow them to come into his kingdom, such that each one had to give two ducats per person. But after a short while, many of them chose to leave from there, and the king investigated if they paid according to the deal, but found that many had not paid, so he took their children between six and ten as payment and sent them to an island elsewhere that he wanted to populate. But it was in vain for him, since most of them died from the snakes, and from famine, etc. And when our elder saw that his fellows did not accept his counsel, and he also saw that the face of the king was ill-disposed towards the Children of Israel, he went to Italy with his children, as he wrote in the chronicles of the Yichayah family. And just as he thought, so it was. For the king of Portugal, Don Manuel, proclaimed with the loud voice of a herald [alluding to Daniel 3:4] that in a short amount of time, all of the Jews would need to convert. And if not, they had to leave. So the Jews chose to go. But when the king saw that they wanted to leave, and he knew that most of the wealth and the sciences were among the Jews and if they would leave, his kingdom would be like a net without any fish, he sent to call all of the [Jewish] homeowners and said to them that his desire was to give them ships and provisions for the journey, to the point that he brought them into his great court with goodly words. Then he began to speak to them with goodly words, that they should convert. But when he saw they did not desire to convert, he took all the youths, brought them to his house of prayer, and threw water upon them [to baptize them] and he gave each one of them a name according to his wish and divided them up to Christian homes to teach them their teaching. And likewise did he do with the old men. But many of them threw themselves into pits, channels, and caves and died from difficult deaths, and killed one another, etc. And out of the Portuguese exile, they were scattered to the four corners of the world. Some of them went to Italy, but the [Jewish] community of Rome promised the pope 1,000 ducats in order that he not let the Spanish Jews into his land. But the pope was angered, saying, "How cruel can you be, towards your brothers?" So he decreed that they leave his land and that Spanish Jews come in their place. So they needed to spend much money to negate the decree, etc. And in a short time, there was an expulsion from the lands of Aragon, Navarre, and Provence.