Decline and Exile To Comino
He remained active in Messina for a decade (1281–91), presenting himself as a "prophet" and "messiah". He had several students there as well as some in Palermo. The local Jewish congregation in Palermo energetically condemned Abulafia's conduct, and around 1285 they addressed the issue to R. Solomon ben Abraham ibn Adret of Barcelona, who devoted much of his career to calming the various messianic hysteriae of the day. Solomon ben Adret subsequently wrote a letter against Abulafia. This controversy was one of the principal reasons for the exclusion of Abulafia’s Kabbalah from the Spanish schools.
Abulafia had to take up the pilgrim's staff anew, and under distressing conditions compiled his Sefer ha-Ot ("Book of the Sign") on the little island of Comino, near Malta, between 1285 and 1288. In 1291 he wrote his last, and perhaps his most intelligible, work, the meditation manual Imre Shefer ("Words of Beauty"); after this all trace of him is lost.
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