By the late 15th century, Sephardic Jews had been largely expelled and dispersed across North Africa, Western Asia, Southern and Southeastern Europe, settling in established Jewish communities or pioneering new ones along trade routes like the Silk Road.

[15] Modern transliteration of Hebrew romanizes the consonant פ (pe without a dagesh dot placed in its center) as the digraph ph, in order to represent fe or the single phoneme /f/ , the English sound that is voiceless labiodental fricative.

[27] Rabbi and scholar Abraham ibn Daud wrote in 1161: "A tradition exists with the [Jewish] community of Granada that they are from the inhabitants of Jerusalem, of the descendants of Judah and Benjamin, rather than from the villages, the towns in the outlying districts [of Israel].

[32] By the mid-5th century, Spain came under the control of the Visigothic Kingdom, following a period of significant instability caused by Barbarian invasions that led to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

[33] As the Visigoths sought to unify the realm under their new religion, their policies towards Jews evolved from initial marginalization to increasingly aggressive measures aimed at their complete eradication from the kingdom.

This thorough adoption of the Arabic language also greatly facilitated the assimilation of Jews into Moorish culture, and Jewish activity in a variety of professions, including medicine, commerce, finance, and agriculture increased.

[citation needed] The Golden Age is most closely identified with the reign of Abd al-Rahman III (882–942), the first independent Caliph of Cordoba, and in particular with the career of his Jewish councilor, Hasdai ibn Shaprut (882–942).

In translating the great works of Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek into Latin, Iberian Jews were instrumental in bringing the fields of science and philosophy, which formed much of the basis of Renaissance learning, into the rest of Europe.

The services of Jewish scientists, doctors, traders, poets, and scholars were generally valued by Christian and Muslim rulers of regional centers, especially as order was restored in recently conquered towns.

Sephardic knowledge of the language and culture of the enemy, their skills as diplomats and professionals, as well as their desire for relief from intolerable conditions — the very same reasons that they had proved useful to the Arabs in the early stages of the Muslim invasion — made their services very valuable.

The number of Sephardim who have rendered important services to different countries is considerable as Samuel Abravanel (or "Abrabanel"—financial councilor to the viceroy of Naples) or Moses Curiel (or "Jeromino Nunes da Costa"-serving as Agent to the Crown of Portugal in the United Provinces).

[40][41] Among other names mentioned are those of Belmonte, Nasi, Francisco Pacheco, Blas, Pedro de Herrera, Palache, Pimentel, Azevedo, Sagaste, Salvador, Sasportas, Costa, Curiel, Cansino, Schönenberg, Sapoznik (Zapatero), Toledo, Miranda, Toledano, Pereira, and Teixeira.

For a long time, the Sephardim took an active part in Spanish literature; they wrote in prose and in rhyme, and were the authors of theological, philosophical, belletristic (aesthetic rather than content-based writing), pedagogic (teaching), and mathematical works.

In a letter dated 25 November 1622, King Christian IV of Denmark invites Jews of Amsterdam to settle in Glückstadt, where, among other privileges, the free exercise of their religion would be assured to them.

The Jewish communities of Yugoslavia and northern Greece, including the 50,000 Jews of Salonika, fell under direct German occupation in April 1941 and bore the full weight and intensity of Nazi repressive measures from dispossession, humiliation, and forced labor to hostage-taking, and finally deportation to the Auschwitz concentration camp and extermination.

Finally, the Jews of Bulgaria proper were under the rule of a Nazi ally that subjected them to ruinous anti-Jewish legislation, but ultimately yielded to pressure from Bulgarian parliamentarians, clerics, and intellectuals not to deport them.

They were therefore considered part of the European pieds noirs community in spite of having been established in North Africa for many centuries, rather than subject to the Indigénat status imposed on their Muslim former neighbors.

British scholar Henry Kamen has said that "the real purpose of the 1492 edict likely was not expulsion, but compulsory conversion and assimilation of all Spanish Jews, a process which had been underway for a number of centuries.

This sub-group of Sephardim settled mostly in various parts of the Ottoman Empire, which then included areas in West Asia's Near East such as Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt; in Southeastern Europe, some of the Dodecanese islands and the Balkans.

[citation needed] Going even further into South Asia, 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.

As a result of this discrimination and persecution, a small number of marranos (conversos who secretly still practiced Judaism) later emigrated to more religiously tolerant Old World countries outside the Iberian cultural sphere, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany and England.

Jews who had only recently reverted in Dutch Brazil then again had to flee to other Dutch-ruled colonies in the Americas, including joining brethren in Curaçao, but also migrating to New Amsterdam, in what is today Lower Manhattan in New York City.

The oldest congregations in the non-Iberian colonial possessions in the Americas were founded by Western Sephardim, many who arrived in the then Dutch-ruled New Amsterdam, with their synagogues being in the tradition of "Spanish and Portuguese Jews".

Among a few notable figures with roots in Western Sephardim are the current president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Benjamin N. Cardozo.

[citation needed] Recent revelations have only come about as a result of modern DNA evidence and newly discovered records in Spain, which had been either lost or hidden, relating to conversions, marriages, baptisms, and Inquisition trials of the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of the Sephardi-origin Iberian immigrants.

Other significant communities of Sephardim Tehorim also migrated in more recent times from the Near East to New York City, Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, Montreal, Gibraltar, Puerto Rico, and Dominican Republic.

Although the deadline was originally the end of 1930, diplomat Ángel Sanz Briz used this decree as the basis for giving Spanish citizenship papers to Hungarian Jews in the Second World War to try to save them from the Nazis.

Except for certain younger individuals, who continue to practice Ḥakitía as a matter of cultural pride, this dialect, probably the most Arabized of the Romance languages apart from Mozarabic, has essentially ceased to exist.

"[150] During the medieval period, a considerable number of Ashkenazi Jews from historic "Ashkenaz" (Germany and France) had moved to study Kabbalah and Torah under the guidance of Sephardic Jewish Rabbis in Iberia.

Genetically, Sephardic Jews are closely related to their Ashkenazi Jewish counterparts and studies have revealed that they mainly have a mixed Middle Eastern (Levantine) and Southern European ancestry.