His father came from a line of Rabbis in Tétouan that emigrated to Gibraltar after a pogrom against the Jews that followed the invasion of the city by Spain.
Bibas studied as a child in Gibraltar and after the death of his father he moved to Livorno to live with his grandfather.
Bibas's plan was to encourage Jews from all over the world to come to Palestine, conquer the land from the Ottomans, and create a Jewish society there.
By 1852, one year after his wife died, Bibas made Aliyah to Palestine, and was welcomed by his students in Jaffa.
[7] In 1953 a professor made the claim that the Dead Sea Scrolls may have come from Bibas's library after having been looted during the 1929 Hebron massacre.