Largely expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the late 15th century, they carried a distinctive Jewish diasporic identity with them to North Africa, including modern day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt; South-Eastern and Southern Europe, including France, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Turkey; the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran; as well as the Americas (although in smaller numbers compared to Ashkenazi Jews); and all other places of their exiled settlement. They sometimes settled near existing Jewish communities or were the first in new frontiers.