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According to family sources, the earliest anscestor who can be confidently named is Issac Amzalak, born c.1750. Very little is known about him except for the fact that he was a rabbi. It is generally assumed that it was either in his time or immediately afterwards that the family left Morocco and settled in Gibraltar.
Issac had two sons, Moses and Joseph, who later produced the two branches of the family. Moses, the elder, was, according to family sources, one of the first jews to have settled in Lisbon. This took place at around the year 1804, before which he had stayed a short period in Gibraltar, thereby attaining British citizenship.
Moses had seven children by his first wife, Simy (1784-1829). When she died he left Portugal and immigrated to Palestine where he settled in Jerusalem. At that point, all contacts between himself and his descendents in Portugal ceased. Moses, who remarried two more times in Jerusalem, soon became one of the prominent figures in the Jewish community, regularly entertaining foreign visitors in his house. One such visitor, an American Christian tourist who saw him in 1849, gave the following description of her impressions:
"We were invited by one of their first families to visit them, they received us with much kindness, and showed us all over their house, which this week is arranged in their best order. Their rooms were comfortable and pleasant, with matting on the floors, divans with neat covers, beds, tables, and a few chairs, which they insisted on our using. Afterwards we sat a while with them in their tabernacle, which was enclosed at the sides with curtains, and covered above with canes, and a few pine branches, which had been brought from a great distance; a small table stood in the centre, upon which all their food must be eaten during this week of the feast; over it was suspended clusters of grapes, figs, and pomegranates. The aged father [Moses], with some difficulty, expressed that from sympathy he loved the stranger, especially Americans; that his people were free in their land, and he had known them in his intercourse of trade in the Mediterranean, while he resided a long time in Gibraltar. he invited us to come often to see him, saying that "we are all united in worshipping the same God, and in looking for his kingdom". The mother and daughters were gaily dressed in English style, and served us with coffee, sweetcakes, and preserved citron, and showed us much love at parting".
Moses Amzalak died in Jerusalem on October 19, 1858 at the age of ninety-one.