God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World

by Alan Mikhail

But King João II, Moor-slayer and sponsor of several of Portugal’s West African expeditions, was as hateful and fearful of Jews as his Spanish counterparts, and quickly enacted policies to push out the refugees. He required that they purchase extortionate entry and residence permits valid for only eight months, after which they were forced to flee again. Those unable to meet the border fees were sold into slavery. And, in an inexplicably cruel move, the king forcibly separated more than a few refugee parents from their children, whom the king sent to the Atlantic island of São Tomé, off the West African coast. This recent Portuguese acquisition, right on the equator, was “inhabited by lizards, snakes, and other venomous reptiles, and was devoid of rational beings.” The children were tossed mercilessly from ships onto the desolate island’s beaches, where “almost all were swallowed up by the huge lizards on the island and the remainder, who escaped these reptiles, wasted away from hunger and abandonment.”