Alhambra Decree
1492 decree expelling Jews from Spain

The Alhambra Decree was an edict issued on 31 March 1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, ordering the expulsion of unconverted Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year. Its primary purpose was to minimize the influence of the remaining Jews on Spain's large converso New Christian population, converted from Judaism, to minimize the possibility that the latter and their descendants would be able to secretly practice their former faith.
“Alhambra Decree” enters the record as 1492 decree expelling Jews from Spain. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alhambra, Decree and decree can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alhambra Decree” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.