Sabbatai had remained at Smyrna for several…

Among the first of those to whom Sabbatai Zevi had revealed his Messiahship are Isaac Silveyra and Moses Pinheiro, the latter a brother-in-law of the Italian rabbi and kabbalist Joseph Ergas.

The college of rabbis, having at its head his teacher, Joseph Escapa, watched Sabbatai closely, and when his Messianic pretensions became too bold they put him and his followers under a ban of cherem, a type of excommunication in classical Judaism.

Sabbatai and his disciples had been banished from Smyrna in about the year 1651 (according to others, 1654) by the aroused rabbinate.

It is not quite certain where he went from there.

He was in 1653, or at the latest 1658, in Constantinople, where he met an esteemed and forceful Jewish preacher and Kabbalist, Abraham ha-Yakini (a disciple of Joseph di Trani), who confirmed Sabbatai.

Abraham Ha-Yakini is said to have forged a manuscript in archaic characters and in a style imitating the ancient apocalypses, and which, he alleged, bore testimony to Sabbatai's Messiahship.

With this document, which he appears to have accepted as an actual revelation, Sabbatai determined to choose Salonika, at this time a center of kabbalists, as the field for his further operations.

Here he had boldly proclaimed himself the Messiah, gaining many adherents.

In order to impress his Messiahship upon the minds of his enthusiastic friends he put on all sorts of mystical events — e.g., the celebration of his marriage as the “One Without End” (the Ein Sof) with the Torah, preparing a solemn festival to which he invited his friends.

The consequence had been his banishment from the city by the rabbis of Salonica, headed by Rabbi Hiyya Abraham Di Boton.

The sources differ widely as to the route he took after this expulsion, Alexandria, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Smyrna and other places being mentioned as temporary centers.

In 1660, however, after long wanderings, he settles in Cairo, where he is to reside for about two years, during which time he wins over to his cause Raphael Halebi, the wealthy and powerful treasurer of the Turkish governor.