The family name, like many other Hispanic-origin Sephardic Jewish surnames, originated in Spain (Hebrew Sefarad) among Spanish Jews (Sephardim), during the time when it was ruled as Al-Andalus by Arabic-speaking Moors.
Moorish rule in the Iberian Peninsula, lasting some 800 years, is regarded as a tolerant period in its acceptance and co-existence between Christians, Muslims and Jews.
After the Catholic Monarchs' successful Reconquista (reconquest of Spain) from the Moors in 1492, they then issued the Alhambra Decree expelling the Jews unless they converted to Catholicism; the penalty was death.
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.
Hayyim ben Jacob Abulafia was chief rabbi in Jerusalem in the nineteenth century and had close dealings with Moses Montefiore, a philanthropist.