Samaria is both a city and a region. This video shows the location of the ancient city, and the hills that surround that location. Samaria was the capital for Ahab and Jezebel and other northern kings. The city oversaw a very prosperous and powerful kingdom, far more lucrative than what the Kings of Judah and Jerusalem knew. This is almost certainly where Elijah found Ahab before and after a three-year drought that crippled the northern economy (1 Kings 17:1, 18:1-2). After the northern kingdom was exiled, non-Jews populated the area. When the Persian king allowed Jews to return to their homeland, the center of the land — with the city of Samaria at its center — was a mixture of religious and cultural beliefs. By the time of the New Testament, when a strong Jewish population was again following biblical customs in Jerusalem, enmity built up between Jews and the “Samaritans.” Jesus famously went through Samaria, where he met a Samaritan woman at a well, but that was in Sychar, near modern-day Nablus.