Last Gaon of Castile

R. Yitzchak Aboab II (1433-1493) was the last great Talmudic authority of Iberian Jewry before the 1492 expulsion — known to history as the 'Last Gaon of Castile'. Born in Castile, he was the senior disciple of R. Yitzchak Canpanton (the head of the Castilian iyun school) and trained a generation of major Spanish-Sephardic rabbis including R. Abraham Zacuto and R. Yitzchak Karo (uncle of R. Yosef Karo).

After the 1492 Edict, he led 30,000 Spanish-Jewish refugees to Portugal, where he negotiated the conditions of their settlement with King João II. He died in Porto seven months later, a few months before the Portuguese expulsion of 1497 that would scatter his followers. His Talmudic novellae are preserved in his students' citations.