Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Claude Cahen, Pre-Ottoman Turkey

(London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1968); Marshall G. S. 

Hodgson, The Venture of Islam. Vol. 2: The Expansion of 

Islam in the Middle Periods (Chicago: University of Chi-

cago Press, 1974); Tamara Talbot Rice, The Seljuks in 

Asia Minor (London: Thames and Hudson, 1961).

Sephardic Jews

Sephardic Jews are the descendants of those Jews 

who settled in Iberia (Spain) before it was under 

Roman control and remained there until the expul-

sion of 1492, experiencing periods of economic 

prosperity and cultural flourishing alternating 

with those of persecution and forced conversions.

Sephardic Jews remember the Convivencia 

(Spanish, “living together”) in al-Andalus as a 

golden age, marked by poetry, 

philosophy

, 

archi

-

tectUre

, and religious tolerance. This era ended 

with the Almohad takeover of 1147, when many 

Jews were forced to convert to Islam. During the 

Christian reconquest, Jews faced increasing mas-

sacre and forced conversion from 1391 through 

the Inquisitions of 1478–1834. By the time of