During the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Iberian Sephardi Jews settled along the coasts of Senegambia, in what is now the Gambia and Senegal. Most of the settlers were male, making it difficult for Jewish communities to take root due to a lack of Jewish matrilineage. However, Jewish men sometimes married Jolof women and had mixed-race children. The children of these marriages, commonly known as Luso-Africans, became an important part of the Luso-African trading class in Senegambia. As a Muslim majority region, Senegambian Jews were granted dhimmi status. Despite the Portuguese government's request for the Jews to be banished from the region, the King of Greater Jolof refused. Jewish residents were expected to live according to Jolof norms and at times Jolof rulers confiscated goods from those Jews who went against social norms. The Jewish settlements of the Senegambia lasted for forty years. The last recorded Sephardi Jewish presence in Senegambia was during the 1630s. Accounts from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries describe the descendants of the Luso-Africans as practicing a hybrid religion combining aspects of Judaism, Christianity, and traditional African religion.
