Avraham ben Shmuel Abulafia (Hebrew: אברהם בן שמואל אבולעפיה) (1240-after 1291), born in Zaragoza, Spain, was the founder of the "Prophetic" school of Ḳabbalah. Early in life he was taken by his parents to Tudela, Navarre, where his aged father, Samuel Abulafia, instructed him in Torah and Talmud. In 1258, when Abulafia was eighteen years old, his father died, and Abulafia began a life of ceaseless wandering shortly thereafter. His first journey, in 1260, was to Erets Yisrael, where he intended to begin a search for the legendary Sambatyon and the Ten Lost Tribes. He got no further than 'Akko (Acre), however, because of the desolation and lawlessness stemming from the chaos following the recent Crusade. The battle that year between the Mongol Empire and Mamluk Sultanate forced his return to Europe via Greece. He had determined to go to Rome but stopped short in Capua, where during the early 1260s, he devoted himself to the study of philosophy and The Guide for the Perplexed of Maimonides under the tutelage of a philosopher and physician named Hillel—probably the well-known Hillel ben Samuel of Verona. On his return to Spain he became subject to visions, and, at the age of thirty-one, in Barcelona, began to study a particular kind of Ḳabbalah whose most important representative was Barukh Togarmi, and received a revelation with messianic overtones. He soon left for Castile, where he disseminated his prophetic Kabbalah among figures like Rabbi Moses of Burgos and his most important disciple, Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla. Some time around 1275; he taught The Guide for the Perplexed and his Kabbalah in a few cities in Greece. He wrote the first of his prophetic books, Sefer haYashar, in Patras in 1279. That same year, he made his way through Trani back to Capua. He went to Rome in 1280 in order to convert Pope Nicholas III to Judaism on the day before Rosh Hashanah. The Pope was in Soriano when he heard of it, and he issued orders to "burn the fanatic" as soon as he reached that place. The stake was erected in preparation close to the inner gate; but Abulafia set out for Soriano all the same and reached there August 22. While passing through the outer gate, he heard that the Pope had died from an apoplectic stroke during the preceding night. He returned to Rome, where he was thrown into prison by the Order of Friars Minor but was liberated after four weeks' detention. He remained active in Messina for a decade (1281–1291), presenting himself as a "prophet", "messiah" and "son of God". He had several students there as well as some in Palermo. The local Jewish congregation in Palermo condemned Abulafia's conduct, and around 1285 addressed the issue to Shlomo ben Aderet of Barcelona, who subsequently wrote a letter against Abulafia. Under distressing conditions compiled his Sefer haOt on the little island of Comino, near Malta, between 1285 and 1288. In 1291 he wrote his last, and perhaps his most intelligible work, the meditation manual Imrei Shefer; after this, all trace of him is lost.