and settled as Jews in Italy often became known as Abolaffio, Bolaffio and Bolaffi. The Abulafias – as with most other Sephardi expellees – settled mostly in the European portions of the Ottoman Empire, largely in what is today Thessaloniki, Greece and Istanbul, Turkey. This area is where the surname was most concentrated until later immigration to other parts of the Ottoman Empire, such as modern Tunisia and Rhodes. The Ottoman Empire collapsed following World War I, with Turkey becoming its successor state, and after World War II and the establishment of Israel, almost all the established Sephardic communities of the former Ottoman Empire moved to Israel, France and the United States. Today, Abulafia is a well-known Sephardic surname in Israel, and it is also present in France, the United States, Australia and Latin America. Following the expulsion from Spain, a branch of the Abulafia family settled in what is now Israel, first in Safed, where they established a long-lasting rabbinic dynasty, and then in Tiberias, where the synagogue of Hayyim Abulafia , one of the old synagogues of Tiberias, is still the principal Sephardic synagogue, and the rabbi's tomb is a place of pilgrimage. Hayyim ben Jacob Abulafia was chief rabbi in Jerusalem in the nineteenth century and had close dealings with Moses Montefiore, a philanthropist. Palestine was also under Ottoman rule at that time. It has been claimed that some of the Abulafias who settled in the Land of Israel would later convert, adopt Arabic as their primary language and assume Arab ethnic identities, today identifying as Palestinians and Arab Israelis. Other Abulafias were closely involved in the foundation of Tel Aviv at the start of the twentieth century. People The surname may refer to: Abulafia Historic Todros ben Yosef Abulafia (1225 – ) prominent Sephardic Jew Abraham ben Shmuel Abulafia (1240, Zaragoza, Spain – , Comino), kabbalist Meir ben Todros HaLevi Abulafia (Ramah) ca. 1170 – 1244), a major 13th-century Sephardic rabbi Samuel ha-Levi (Samuel ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia) (Úbeda ca. 1320 – Seville 1360), treasurer of King Pedro I "the Cruel" of Castile and founder of the Synagogue of El Transito in Toledo, Spain Hayyim ben Yaaqov Abulafia (1660–1744) Modern Isaac ben Moses Abulafia (1824-1910), rabbi and halakhist David Samuel Harvard Abulafia (born 1949) Yossi Abulafia, author Louis Abolafia (1941–1995), an artist and former candidate for the United States presidency during the 1960s. Marilyn Sultana Aboulafia,