Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the Iberian Peninsula. In the narrower ethnic definition, a Sephardi Jew is one descended from the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula in the late 15th century, immediately prior to the issuance of the Alhambra Decree of 1492 by order of the Catholic Monarchs in Spain, and the decree of 1496 in Portugal by order of King Manuel I
. The Sephardim initially fled to North Africa and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, and many of these eventually settled in such countries as France, Holland, England, Italy, and the Balkans
. They have had a presence in North Africa and various parts of the Mediterranean and Western Asia due to their expulsion from Spain. There have also been Sephardic communities in South America and India
. The modern Israeli Hebrew definition of Sephardi is a much broader, religious-based definition that generally excludes ethnic considerations
. Sephardic Jews have a unique cultural distinctiveness characterized by their language, arts, architecture, and ritual customs, and they have made significant contributions to various fields such as poetry, scholarship, and medicine
. Their unique language, Ladino, a blend of medieval Spanish with loan words from Hebrew, Arabic, and Portuguese, is still spoken by some Sephardic communities
. Today, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews share the same tenets of Judaism but have differences in customs and liturgy
