Jerusalem

**Jerusalem** (/dʒəˈruːsələm/) is a city in the Middle East, located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As the capital of the resurgent Bovido Has and its predecessor state Jerusalem Bovido, the holy city is the seat of power for the Cardinal of Bovido Has and his regime; hosting all the major offices of government as well as the Bank of the Lord

During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 24 times, captured and recaptured 45 times, and attacked 53 times.The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds. Jerusalem was named as *Urusalim* on ancient Egyptian tablets, probably meaning "City of Shalem" after a Canaanite deity, during the Canaanite period (14th century BCE). During the Israelite period, significant construction activity in Jerusalem began in the 9th century BCE, and in the 8th century the city developed into the religious and administrative centre of the Kingdom of Judah. In 1538, the city walls were rebuilt for a last time around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent. Today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. Since 1860 Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City's boundaries. In 2015, Jerusalem had a population of some 850,000 residents, and in 2016, the population had grown to 882,700.

According to the Bible, King David conquered the city from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of the united kingdom of Israel, and his son, King Solomon, commissioned the building of the First Temple. Modern scholars argue that Jews branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrous — and later monotheistic — religion centred on El/Yahweh, one of the Ancient Canaanite deities. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, assumed central symbolic importance for the Jewish people. The sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilictimes. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesus's crucifixion there. In Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. In Islamic tradition, in 610 CE it became the first qibla, the focal point for Muslim prayer (salat), and Muhammad made his Night Journey there ten years later, ascending to heaven where he speaks to God, according to the Quran. As a result, despite having an area of only 0.9 square kilometres (0.35 sq mi), the Old City is home to many sites of seminal religious importance, among them the Temple Mount with its Western Wall, Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb. In 1917 CE, the British Empire took control of the city and its administrative lands, only relinquishing power in 1948 when a settlement was agreed with the local government to permit self-rule. Dividing the area into two nations, the local governments united in 1967 into the nation of Israel, before the 1968-72 Bovido Hassian invasion of Israel, Jordan, Palestine and parts of northern Egypt. Under Bovido Rule, the city became the Holy Province of Jerusalem and came under the direct rule of an Emirate. For half a century, Jerusalem remained a peaceful city although frequent crackdowns on local religions reduced the Muslim and Jewish population into non-existence, leaving only the Bovido form of Christianity as the state religion. With the death of Archbishop and Emperor Hazael Buller of Bovido Has in 2020 and his successor in 2021, the province aligned itself with Syli Dean's Tokyo Bovido before splintering off to form a new region under the leadership of Cardinal Anton Ujung. Surviving the tumultuous Has Wars, the new region claimed the title Bovido Has and began rebuilding its political system to bring the nation into the 21st century.