 al-Harizi compared Saladins decree allowing Jews to re-establish themselves in Jerusalem to the one issued by the Persian Cyrus the Great over 1,600 years earlier.In 1211, the Jewish community in the country was strengthened by the arrival of a group headed by over 300 rabbis from France and England, among them Rabbi Samson ben Abraham of Sens.The motivation of European Jews to emigrate to the Holyland in the 13th-century possibly lay in persecution, economic hardship, messianic expectations or the desire to fulfill the commandments specific to the land of Israel.