Musta'arabi Jews ( al-Mustaʿribīn "Mozarabs"; Mustaʿravim) were the Arabic-speaking Jews, largely Mizrahi Jews and Maghrebi Jews, who lived in the Middle East and North Africa prior to the arrival and integration of Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews of the Iberian Peninsula, following their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Following their expulsion, Sephardi Jewish exiles moved into the Middle East and North Africa (among other countries around the Mediterranean Basin), and settled among the Musta'arabi.
In many Arab countries, Sephardi immigrants and the established Musta'arabi communities maintained separate synagogues and separate religious rituals, but often had a common Chief Rabbinate. The general tendency, however, was for both the communities and their customs to amalgamate, adopting a mostly Sephardic liturgy. This pattern was found in most Musta'arabi communities in Arab countries. A typical example is in the history of the Jews in Syria.
In contrast, in Tunisia, there was a strong and enduring social distinction between Tuansa (the established Tunisian Jews) and L'grana (immigrant Livornese Jews from Italy to Tunisia).
Background
The word "Mustaʿrabi" itself, and its Hebrew equivalent mistaʿrevim, meaning "those who live among the Arabs", are derived from the Arabic mustaʿrib, meaning “arabized”. Compare with the term "Mozarab" (mozárabe in Spanish, borrowed from Arabic) to refer to Arabized (but not Islamized) Christian Spaniards in Arab ruled Islamic Spain. "Musta'arabi" was also used by medieval Jewish authors to refer to Jews in North Africa, in what would become the modern states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya (which also underwent cultural and linguistic Arabization following the Muslim conquest there).
Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Syria and the surrounding region was brought under Arab rule in the first half of the seventh century, and the Jews of the land, like the Christian majority at that time, became culturally Arabized, adopting many of the ways of the new foreign elite minority rulers, including the language.
Musta'arabim, in the Arabized Hebrew of the day, was used to refer to Arabic-speaking Jews native to Greater Syria who were, "like Arabs" or "culturally Arabic-oriented". These Musta'arabim were also called Murishkes or Moriscos by the Sephardi immigrants. This may be either a corruption of "Mashriqis" (Easterners) or a Ladino word meaning "like Moors" or "Moorish" (compare with the Spanish word Morisco).
In Israel
The Musta'arabi Jews in the Land of Israel constituted one of the three main components of the Old Yishuv (Jewish community of Israel), together with the Sephardi Jews, and Ashkenazi Jews. The latter were a minority whose numbers shrank further due to intermarriage with Sephardim.
The Musta'arabi Jews in Palestine were descendants of the ancient Hebrews who never left the Land of Israel, instead remaining there through the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD to the First Aliyah in 1881, prior to the onset of Zionist immigration. Under the rule of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-16th century, there were no more than 10,000 Jews divided between numerous groups of congregations in all of Palestine. Within the Jewish community at this time, there was some conflict between the Musta'arabim and Jews who had immigrated to Israel from Spain and Sicily. Later on, there was also conflict between Jewish citizens of the Ottoman Empire and those who held foreign passports (the so-called Francos or Señores Francos). From 1839 onward, Jewish subjects of the Ottoman Empire, including the Musta'arabim, were represented by a locally nominated rabbi, whose appointment to serve as a hakham bashi or "chief rabbi" required approval from the Ottoman authorities. This hierarchical system paralleled one previously established for Christian bishops in the empire.
Due to the persecution of the rural Jewish population since the Islamic period into the Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman periods, the Musta'arabim decreased from a majority of the Galilee's population to its smallest minority.. In many of them, there were indigenous Jewish villagers until the Ottoman period. Only in Peki'in there was a Musta'arabi population that has survived. Due to the Arab revolt in the 1930s they were forced to evacuate their ancestral historic village and to move to Hadera, where most of them are living today. The synagogues and cemeteries of Musta'arabi Jews, as in Peki'in, are considered the oldest in the Jewish world and can be dated largely to the Talmudic period but also to Mishnaic and Second Temple period.