This website used Africa and Asia as a catch-all category. If there is a dominant theme in this region, it is the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire. The Millet system gave Jews a degree of autonomy but at the same time the unwillingness to abandon religious diktats for Enlightenment ideas caused economic and cultural decay.
The lack of opportunities in the Ottoman Empire was one cause of emigration. So too the opening of the Suez Canal which undermined the Levantine economy. Arab antisemitism, sometimes in hostility to the creation of a Jewish state in Israel, forced virtually all Jews to leave new Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa.
- 1492: Expulsion, followed by Sephardic Jews settling around the Mediterranean, including joining the existing community in Morocco
- 1497: Additional influx of Sephardim to Morocco following expulsion from Portugal.
- 1505: First documented Sephardic Jews arrive in Cochin, India.
- 1516-1517: Ottoman conquest of the Levant
- 1535: Sephardic Jews settle in Tunisia under Ottoman rule.
- 1556: Joseph Nasi becomes influential in the Ottoman court, promoting Sephardic interests.
- 1564: Joseph Caro completes the Shulchan Aruch in Safed, a major codification of Jewish law.
- 1739: Sephardic Jews establish community in Tripoli, Libya.
- 1796: Establishment of the Paradesi Synagogue in Cochin, India by Sephardic Jews.
- 1805: Sephardic Jews from London and Amsterdam begin settling in Cape Town, South Africa.
- 1830: French conquest of Algeria leads to improved legal status for Sephardic Jews.
- 1840: Damascus Blood Libel.
- 1870: Alliance Israélite Universelle establishes first schools in Morocco, improving education for Sephardic communities.
- 1912: Italy conquers Libya
- 1917: Balfour Declaration
- 1923: Treaty of Lausanne
- 1939-1945: Second World War.
- 1948: Establishment of Israel leads to significant emigration of Sephardic Jews
- 1956: Suez Crisis
- 1960s: Decolonization of North Africa leads to large-scale emigration of Sephardic Jews from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.
- 1970: Congo (Kinshasa) gains independence, leading to departure of small Sephardic community.