North African Sephardim

that North African Sephardic communities include a fraction of those of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya due to their historical ties with Spain and the greater Iberian peninsula.

As Judah Hayyat, a refugee intellectual, recalled: They smote me, they wounded me, they took away my veil from me and threw me into a deep pit with snakes and scorpions in it.

They presently sentenced me to be stoned to death, but promised that if I changed religion they would make me captain over them...But the G-d in whom I trust frustrated their design....G-d stirred up the spirit of the Jews in Chechaouen, and they came thither to redeem me[5][6]Apart from being Jewish and Arabic-speaking, Jews from the Maghreb have varying origins and came to North Africa at different times for different reasons.

The Berber King of Fez, Mulai Muhammed esh-Sheikh, agreed to let Sephardi Jews settle outside the city walls, attracting 20,000 refugees alone.

[4][7] Thus, according to Schroeter, many Maghrebi Jews ultimately assimilated into the Sephardi community, which accounts for the popularity of Sephardic customs in this area today.

[10] The term Sephardi means "Spanish" or "Hispanic" and is derived from Sepharad, a Biblical location most commonly identified with Hispania, that is, the Iberian Peninsula.

However, they are still spoken among the more elderly members of the community, and some Sephardi Jews in Morocco recently have made efforts to preserve Haketia and its cultural influence.

These migrants also carry surnames based either on various Iberian idioms, Arabic or Hebrew languages (such as Abensur, Abravanel, Abulafia, Albaranes, Almosnino, Amigo, Bensussan, Biton, Corcos, Gabbay, Nahon, and Serfaty).

These names have since disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula when those that stayed behind as conversos received at the moment of their conversion surnames used by Spanish or Portuguese Christians.