settled in Bethshan, recognized them as co-religionists, led astray by erroneous notions, but not to be rejected. CHAPTER III. THE AGE OF THE ASHERIDES AND OF GERSONIDES. Condition of Palestine--Pilgrims and Immigrants--Shem Tob Ibn-Gaon--Favorable Position of the Jews in Castile under Alfonso XI--Persecution in Navarre--Joseph de Ecija and Samuel Ibn-Wakar--Increase of Anti-Jewish Feelings--Abner--Alfonso of Burgos, Convert to Christianity, and Persecutor of the Jews--Gonzalo Martinez--Fall of Martinez and Deliverance of the Jews--Decline of the Study of Science--The Study of the Talmud prosecuted with Renewed Vigor--Jacob and Judah Asheri--Isaac Pulgar, David Ibn-Albilla--The Provençal Philosophers Ibn-Kaspi, Leon de Bagnols, and Vidal Narboni--Decline of the Study of the Talmud in Germany--Emperor Louis of Bavaria and the Jews--Persecution by the "Leather-Arms." 1328-1350 C.E. The Holy Land was once more accessible to its children. The Egyptian sultans, into whose power it passed after the fall of Accho and the expulsion of the Christians, were more tolerant than the Christian Byzantine emperors and the Frankish crusading kings. They did not hinder the coming of Jewish pilgrims who desired to lighten their over-burdened hearts by praying and weeping over the ruins of the past, so rich in recollections, or at the graves of their great men there interred; nor did they oppose the settlement of European exiles, who again cultivated the soil of the land of their fathers. The long, firm, yet mild, reign of the Mameluke sultan, Nassir Mahomet (1299-1341), was a happy time for the Jews who visited Palestine. Whilst under the rule of the Christian governors of the country no Jew was permitted to approach the former capital, at this time Jewish pilgrims from Egypt and Syria regularly came to Jerusalem, to celebrate the festivals, as in the time when the Temple shone in all its splendor. The Karaites established special forms of prayer for those who went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem: at their departure, the whole congregation assembled to give utterance in prayer to the bitter-sweet emotions connected with Zion. The immigrants who settled in Palestine engaged in agriculture. They came to feel so thoroughly at home there that the question was mooted whether the laws of tithes, of the year of release, and others ought not to be again carried into effect. In consequence of the freedom and tolerance which the Jews were enjoying, many enthusiastic spirits were again seized by the ardent desire to kiss the dust of the Holy Land. Emigration to Palestine, especially from the extreme west, became very common at this time.