Characteristics
Levantines were mostly of Italian (especially Venetian and Genoese), French, or other Euro-Mediterranean origin and have been living in Constantinople/Istanbul, Smyrna/Izmir and other parts of Anatolia (in present-day Turkey) and the eastern Mediterranean coast, the so-called Levant, since the middle Byzantine or the Ottoman era.
The majority of them are either descendants of traders from the maritime republics of the Mediterranean (such as Venice, Genoa and Ragusa) or of European inhabitants of the Crusader states (especially the French Levantines in Lebanon, Israel and Turkey).
Read more about this topic: Levantines (Latin Christians)