Baghdad vs Lund

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Baghdad (; Arabic: بَغْدَاد‎ [baɣˈdaːd] (listen)) is the capital of Iraq and one of the largest cities in the Arab world, and compared to its large population it has a small area at just 673 square kilometers. Located along the Tigris, near the ruins of the Akkadian city of Babylon and the ancient Iranian capital of Ctesiphon, Baghdad was founded in the 8th century and became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Within a short time, Baghdad evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center of the Muslim world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as hosting a multiethnic and multireligious environment, garnered the city a worldwide reputation as the "Centre of Learning". Baghdad was the largest city in the world for much of the Abbasid era during the Islamic Golden Age, peaking at a population of more than a million. The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues and multiple successive empires.

With the recognition of Iraq as an independent state (formerly the British Mandate of Mesopotamia) in 1932, Baghdad gradually regained some of its former prominence as a significant center of Arabic culture, with a population variously estimated at 6 or over 7 million.In contemporary times, the city has often faced severe infrastructural damage, most recently due to the United States-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent Iraq War that lasted until December 2011. In recent years, the city has been frequently subjected to insurgent attacks, resulting in a substantial loss of cultural heritage and historical artifacts as well. As of 2018, Baghdad was listed as one of the least hospitable places to live, ranked by Mercer as the world's worst major city for quality of life.

Source: Wikipedia

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Lund (, also US: LU(U)ND, Swedish: [ˈlɵnːd] (listen)) is a city in the southern Swedish province of Scania, across the Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 as of 2018. It is the seat of Lund Municipality, Skåne County. The Öresund Region, which includes Lund, is home to 4 million people. Archeologists date the foundation of Lund to around 990, when Scania was part of Denmark. From 1103 it was the seat of the Catholic Metropolitan Archdiocese of Lund, and the towering Lund Cathedral, built circa 1090–1145, still stands at the centre of the town.

Denmark ceded the city to Sweden in the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, and its status as part of Sweden was formalised in 1720. Lund University, established in 1666, is one of Scandinavia's oldest and largest institutions for education and research. The university and its buildings dominate much of the centre of the city, and have led to Lund becoming a regional centre for high tech industry.

Source: Wikipedia