North African Sephardim

During the 16th to 19th centuries, Sephardic Jews in North Africa leveraged transnational familial networks, linguistic flexibility, and diplomatic neutrality to facilitate complex commercial exchanges, including significant involvement in the trans-Saharan and transatlantic slave trades.^[11] Following the Alhambra Decree in 1492, many Sephardic immigrants migrated to the Maghreb, where they integrated with indigenous North African Jewish populations.^[12]Operating often as cross-cultural brokers or "Port Jews", North African Sephardim effectively bridged the logistical and economic chasms separating Western European mercantile syndicates, Levantine commercial hubs, and the remote sub-Saharan entrepôts where enslaved individuals and raw commodities were sourced.^[13]

Rather than relying solely on coastal European forts, these North African Jewish merchant collectives penetrated deep into West African markets. Along the Petite Côte of Senegal, they established robust, permanent trade networks, successfully negotiating with both European chartered companies and local African elites.^[14] This deep integration into the African interior is corroborated by regional material culture, notably Nigerian sculptures from the era that specifically depict Jewish traders engaged in long-distance commerce.^[15]

In North Africa itself, another notable case of globally influential North African Sephardim are the Macnin Brothers, Meir and Schlomo Macnin. They were the dominant Tujjar al-Sultan of Morocco in the late 18th and 19th centuries. They financed and controlled a massive portion of Trans-Atlantic Trade. Thanks to the efforts of these broader Sephardic Jewish merchant connections, Morocco became the first nation to formally recognize the United States in 1777.

Moving beyond the African coast, these networks systematically embedded themselves into the emerging New World plantation economies. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, they utilized their transnational connections to bypass imperial monopolies, facilitating complex, cross-border commercial exchanges among the Portuguese, Dutch, and British empires. In the Caribbean basin, Jewish communities brought critical agricultural expertise and massive capital investments that catalyzed the colonial sugar industries. Across Jamaica, Barbados, and Saint-Domingue, North African and Sephardic populations integrated deeply into the colonial economy as plantation owners and central figures in cross-imperial smuggling operations. The permanence of these communities is evidenced by numerous Jewish toponymies still present in Haitian geography today, as well as the entrenched plantation wealth of lineages like the Gabay dynasty.^[16][17]

The immense wealth and global connections generated by this involvement in the Caribbean and transatlantic trades laid the economic foundation for early North American Jewish communities. A notable figure with an important influence in the development of North American Jewry was Moses Elias Levy, "The Merchant Prince", a Moroccan Sephardic Jew who operated out of St Thomas, Puerto Rico and Havana. Levy's massive economic success, built heavily on the Caribbean plantation economy, allowed his family to achieve unprecedented political prominence. His son, David Levy Yulee became the first ever Jewish Senator elected in America, highlighting the North African Sephardic influence in North America and illustrating a unique trajectory of social mobility and political emancipation that was largely unparalleled in contemporary Europe.^[18]

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.^[19] However, the Sephardi label has been described as misleading by Christopher L. Campbell et al., who argue that although the expulsion from Spain and Portugal led to the conglomeration of Jewish groups, many Jewish communities were formed before Jews reached the Iberian Peninsula.^[20] Furthermore, Sepharad still refers to "Spain" in modern Hebrew, but, today, the notion of a Sephardic Jew has expanded, as the Sephardi Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 mixed with the Maghrebi Jews of North Africa.

Sephardi Jews who first settled in North Africa spoke Haketia, a Romance language also called "Ladino Occidental" (Western Ladino). Haketia is a Judaeo-Spanish variety derived from Old Spanish, plus Hebrew and Aramaic.^[19] The language was taken to North Africa in the 15th century where it was heavily influenced by Maghrebi Arabic.^[21] Maghrebi Jews, on the other hand, spoke Maghrebi Arabic and Judeo-Arabic languages.

Today, few people speak these languages, as the use for them is rapidly declining. 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.^[22]

North African Sephardim have a blend of surnames that vary in origin.

The first layer corresponds to Sephardim who after the Jewish massacre of 1391 came from northern Spain to the territory of modern Algeria. Among these families were those bearing such surnames as Astruc, Barsessat, Cohen Solal, Duran, Efrati, Gabbay, and S(a)tora. The second layer of original Sephardim came from Spain at the end of the 15th century. 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.

Among surnames used by local Jews that were formed in North Africa are such names based on male given names as Benhamou and Benishu, those derived from local place names as Dray, Gamrasni or Messalati. A few surnames in Algeria are based on local Berber idioms: Amrai, Attelan, Zemmour. Several dozens of surnames of Jewish surnames from Morocco are drawn or at least have prefixes taken from Berber dialects of that country: Aferiat, Assulin, Azencot, Azulay, Buganim, Timsit, Ohana, Ohayon, Ouaknin, Wizman.^[23][24][25]

The relationship between Sephardi-descended communities is illustrated in the following diagram:

• Eastern Sephardim
• Mizrahi Jews
• Mashriqi Jews
• Berber Jews
• Sephardic Anusim
• Western Sephardim
• Sephardic Bnei Anusim
• Neo-Western Sephardim
• Lançados