On 2 January 1492, Muhammad XII of Granada conceded defeat to Isabella and Ferdinand, the Catholic monarchs of Castile and Aragon. His surrender came after ten years of war and marked the end of almost eight centuries of Islamic power in the Iberian Peninsular. The Ottoman Empire was a powerful presence in the East – from what is now Serbia to Greece and on to the lands north of the Black Sea, now part of Ukraine.

Isabella and Ferdinand had been running the Inquisition – a campaign of terror primarily aimed at forcing Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity to conform to orthodoxy – since 1478. Christian persecution of Jews in Spain had a long history, reaching back to the Synod of Elvira in the first years of the fourth century, and included the notorious massacre that followed an inflammatory sermon by a demagogic cleric on Ash Wednesday in 1391. Muslim rule had provided a long respite, during which there was significant Jewish flourishing. But after the defeat of Muhammad XII, Isabella and Ferdinand moved swiftly to secure the ideological base for their authority, and to expropriate wealth. On 31 March, an edict was issued expelling practicing Jews from Spain. Many found sanctuary in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire.