The Judiaria do Fundão belonged to the Jewish geography of the Beira Interior, in a town connected to movement between Covilhã, Castelo Branco, the Serra da Gardunha, and the frontier lands of the Raia.

The Judiaria do Fundão in Santo António

Historical research locates the Judiaria do Fundão near the Bairro de Santo António, in the eastern part of the town. The exact limits of the medieval Jewish quarter are not fully reconstructed. For this reason, the identification should be read as an urban area, not as a surviving building.

The same research states that the Jewish quarter grew over time and reached greater importance after the expulsion of Jews from Castile and Aragon in 1492. In this context, Fundão formed part of the wider Beira Interior frontier zone, where settlement, refuge, royal control, and local economic life were closely connected in the final years of legal Jewish life in Portugal.

Mestre Boino Abolafia

A documented name from this period is Mestre Boino Abolafia, also recorded in later medical literature as Bueno Abolafia. In 1495, he appears as a physician connected to Fundão, with reference to the Chancelaria of King Manuel I.

Medical-historical research adds that Bueno or Boino Abolafia was living in Fundão when he received a formal letter as físico, the term used at the time for a physician. The letter was issued in Alcácer do Sal on 8 October 1495, after approval by Rodrigo de Lucena, físico-mor of the kingdom.

A documented urban memory

The pin marks the documented area of the Judiaria do Fundão and the local memory connected to Mestre Boino Abolafia. The evidence is limited, but it is specific: an eastern urban location near Santo António, a late fifteenth-century moment of growth, and a royal chancery reference to a Jewish physician living in Fundão.