The designation Sepharad in biblical times refers to a colony of “exiles from Jerusalem” (Obadiah 20), possibly in or near Sardis; in the medieval period the Jews who lived in Spain and Portugal (the Iberian peninsula) before the expulsion of 1492 assumed this appellation. As a cultural designation, the term refers to the Jews of the Mediterranean region and its related Diaspora in the Balkans and Middle East (especially in Islamic countries). The term is used in contradistinction to Ashkenazic, but it does not refer, thereby, to all Jews of non-Ashkenazic origin.