Mizrahi Jews - Jews saved by muslims

Many of the Sephardic Jews exiled from Spain resettled in greater or lesser numbers in many Arabic-speaking countries, such as Syria and Morocco. In Syria, most eventually intermarried with and assimilated into the larger established community of Arabic-speaking Jews. In North African countries, by contrast, where the Sephardim came to outnumber the pre-existing Mizrahi Jew communities it was some of the latter who assimilated into the more prosperous and prestigious Sephardic communities. In Morocco a distinction remained between the purely Sephardic Gerush Castilia of the Spanish-speaking northern strip and Toshavim (indigenous Jews of North Africa) communities of the interior. Either way, this assimilation, combined with the use of the Sephardic rite, led to the popular designation and conflation of most non-Ashkenazic Jewish communities from the Middle East and North Africa as "Sephardic", whether or not they were descended from Spanish Jews, which is what the terms "Sephardic Jews" and "Sepharadim" properly implied when used in the ethnic as opposed to the religious sense.