The conspicuous decrepitude of Karaism and the ignorance of its followers afforded the Rabbanites in the Turkish empire an opportunity for reconciling them to Talmudic Judaism, or, at least, overcoming their bitter hostility towards it. Rabbanite teachers, Enoch Saporta, an immigrant from Catalonia, Eliezer Kapsali, from Greece, and Elias Halevi, from Germany, stipulated that their Karaite pupils, whom they instructed in the Talmud, should thenceforward abstain, in writing and in speech, from reviling Talmudic authorities, and from desecrating the festivals of the Rabbanite calendar. In the difficult position in which studiously inclined Karaites found themselves, they could not do otherwise than give this promise. The Turkish chief rabbi, Moses Kapsali, was of opinion that, as the Karaites rejected the Talmud, they might not be taught in it. But he was a disciple of the strict German school, which, in its gloomy ultra-piety, would allow no concessions, even though the gradual conversion of a dissenting sect could be effected. When contrasted with the miserable condition of the Jews in Germany, the lot of those who had taken up their abode in the newly-risen Turkish empire must have seemed unalloyed happiness. Jewish immigrants who had escaped the ceaseless persecutions to which they had been subjected in Germany expressed themselves in terms of rapture over the happy condition of the Turkish Jews. Unlike their co-religionists under Christian rule, they were not compelled to yield up the third part of their fortunes in royal taxes; nor were they in any way hindered in the conduct of business. They were permitted to dispose of their property as they pleased, and had absolute freedom of movement throughout the length and breadth of the empire. They were subject to no sumptuary laws, and were thus able to clothe themselves in silk and gold, if they chose. The fruitful lands taken from the slothful Greek Christians were occupied by them, and offered rich reward to their industry. Turkey was, in short, correctly described by an enthusiastic Jew as a land "in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is wanting." Two young immigrants, Kalmann and David, thought that if German Jews realized but a tenth part of the happiness to be found in Turkey, they would brave any hardships to get there. These two young men persuaded Isaac Zarfati, who had journeyed in Turkey in earlier times, and whose name was by no means unknown in Germany, to write a circular letter to the Jews of the Rhineland, Styria, Moravia and Hungary, to acquaint them with the happy lot of Jews under the crescent as compared with their hard fate under the shadow of the cross, and to call upon them to escape from the German house of bondage and emigrate to Turkey. The lights and shadows of his subject could not have been more sharply defined than they are in Zarfati's letter (written in 1456), whose graphic, often somewhat too artificial language does not readily lend itself to translation: