For centuries, these Jews made up the majority of the population of Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece) and were present in large numbers in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) and Sarajevo (in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina), all of which were located in the Ottoman-ruled parts of Europe.
Some migrated farther east to the territories of the Ottoman Empire, settling among the long-established Arabic-speaking Jewish communities of Baghdad in Iraq, Damascus in Syria and Alexandria in Egypt.
A few of the Eastern Sephardim followed the spice trade routes as far as the Malabar coast of southern India, where they settled among the established Cochin Jewish community, again, they imparted their culture and their customs to the local Jews.
The presence of Sephardim and New Christians along the Malabar coast eventually aroused the ire of the Catholic Church, which then obtained permission from the Portuguese crown to establish the Goan Inquisition against the Sephardic Jews of India.
Despite efforts by the secular Jewish press and Alliance to promote French, the majority of Turkish Jews were still speaking Ladino in the early 20th century.
Another writer, Isaac Bekhor Amarachi, ran a printing business and also translated some works from Hebrew into Ladino, including a biography of the English-Sephardic philanthropist Moses Montefiore.
In most locales, where the Eastern Sephardim settled, the indigenous Jewish population came to adopt the culture and customs of the recent Sephardic arrivals.