Spanish Jews once constituted one of the largest and most prosperous Jewish communities under Muslim and Christian rule in Spain. The majority of Spanish Jews were forced to convert, or were expelled or killed in 1492, when Christian Spain completed its conquest of the Muslim territories in the south. Many prominent Rabbis, including Maimonides, Nachmanides the Rosh and the Rashba came from Spain.
Today, sixty-seven thousand Jews live in Spain, but the descendants of Spanish (and Portuguese) Jews, the Sephardic Jews, still make up around a tenth of the global Jewish population.
