Editing Zarahemla (section)

== Setting ==
In the Book of Mormon, the "land of Zarahemla" is populated by the "people of Zarahemla", so called for Zarahemla, their ruler at the time of the Nephites' encounter with them.<ref name=":1">{{Harvtxt|Hardy|2023|pp=210n12–13, 210n14–16, 222}}. Quotation is {{sourcetext|source=Book_of_Mormon_(1981)|book=Omni|chapter=1|verse=13–14}}.</ref>{{Efn|Readers have often called this people the "Mulekites", after the name of Zarahemla's ancestor, though the term is not original to the Book of Mormon.<ref>{{harvtxt|Hardy|2023|pp=210n14–16}}.</ref>}} Zarahemla is identified as a descendant of [[Mulek]], who according to the Book of Mormon is a son of the biblical king [[Zedekiah]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Hardy|2023|p=222}}. See {{sourcetext|source=Book_of_Mormon_(1981)|book=Helaman|chapter=6|verse=10}} for the identification of Mulek as Zedekiah's son.</ref>{{Efn|Mulek himself is an extrabiblical figure.<ref name="Hardy 2023 889">{{harvtxt|Hardy|2023|p=889}}.</ref>}} 350 years earlier, around the same time as the Nephites' ancestor Lehi's flight from Jerusalem, Mulek had led a group from Jerusalem, guided by God, to the same new continent as the Nephites.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Hardy|2023|pp=210n14–16, 222}}.</ref>

When the Nephite king [[King Mosiah I|Mosiah]]{{Efn|The grandfather of the more well known [[King Mosiah II|King Mosiah]].<ref name="Hardy 2023 889">{{harvtxt|Hardy|2023|p=889}}.</ref>}} leads a group of Nephite refugees, in response to divine direction, out from the land of Nephi and into the land of Zarahemla, encountering the people of Zarahemla, they and the Nephites unite their societies, and Mosiah becomes king of them all.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Austin|2024|p=83}}.</ref> Zarahemla becomes the second capital city of the Nephites.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Bingman|1978|p=388}}; {{Harvnb|Hardy|2023|pages=210n12–13, 222, 225, 892}}.</ref> Literary scholar Jared Hickman calls it "the Nephite home base for the rest of the narrative" after the Nephites migrate there.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Hickman|2022|p=280}}.</ref> The Nephites who remain in the land of Nephi, rather than follow Mosiah to the land of Zarahemla, never reappear in the Book of Mormon, and the land of Nephi becomes Lamanite territory.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Hardy|2023|pp=210n12–13}}.</ref>

A temple features in the narrative as the apparent geographic, ceremonial, and societal center of Zarahemla.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Ricks|2012|p=20}}.</ref>