Sephardi Jews, also known as Sephardic Jews or simply Sephardim (Hebrew: סְפָרַדִּים, Modern Hebrew: Sfaraddim, Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm; also יְהוּדֵי סְפָרַד Y'hudey Spharad, lit. "The Jews of Spain"), are a Jewish ethnic division whose ethnogenesis and emergence as a distinct community of Jews coalesced in the Iberian Peninsula around the start of the 2nd millennium (i.e., about the year 1000). They established communities throughout Spain and Portugal, where they traditionally resided, evolving what would become their distinctive characteristics and diasporic identity. Their millennial residence as an open and organised Jewish community in Iberia was brought to an end starting with the Alhambra Decree by Spain's Catholic Monarchs in the late 15th century, which resulted in a combination o