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Notes -
Arab Jews have the same relative advantage in the Middle East that European Jews did in European lands. 95 IQ in a land of 84s is as much an advantage as 112 is in a land of 100s.
For a contemporary example, see the Lebanese who dominate commercial life in large parts of West Africa. In much of the West (outside of America which got the most elite Maronites), these are not hugely impressive immigrants - in Australia many are considered a underclass! - but in West Africa they are a market dominant minority, sometimes to a scarcely believable extent in places like Liberia, but to a great extent even in the larger nations.
Sephardic Jewry’s outperformance in European lands (where the differential was less) was more contingent. They did well enough for a time under the Arabs as a middle man minority, and restrictions on usury meant many adopted roles in finance / lending too, and therefore were early to the shipping and capital markets boom in the mercantile age in Amsterdam, but the advantage was less than it was in either Ashkenazi or Mizrachi lands.
In a way, that arguably led to less antisemitism, which while certainly prevalent in the inquisition etc, was probably still substantially less violent than the Jewish experience during the crusades in Western and Central Europe or in Eastern Europe later in the millennium, or the Jewish experience in Persia, which alternated between semi-tolerance and what European Jewish visitors in the 17th and 18th centuries often considered the worst persecution they had encountered.
Fair, for some reason the other jews are usually compared to western populations also. Still, the versions of selection Ive heard for central/eastern europe kick in late relative to the history of persecution - often, with parts of that persecution as a cause. And I would guess the MENA version went similarly.
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