The Making and Remaking of Geo-political and Cultural Units in Bengal (13th to 18th Centuries)

Abstract

This research work deals with multi-dimensional factors - manmade and natural- that acted as catalysts in the making and remaking of geo-political and cultural units in Bengal in six centuries (c.1200-1800 CE) using coins, epigraphs and structural remains as primary sources. It presents a description of the geographical features of this land to prepare the spatial setting- location, land formation, climate and the dynamic role in their formation and growth. In the pre-thirteenth century phase, the janapadas originated from people living here and gradually turned into political entities like Pundra-Varendra, Gaur, Rarh, Vanga, Samatata and Harikela. The last three entities remained out of the political domain of the Pala rulers (c. 764-1166 CE) and developed as separate geo political entities. This thesis has proposed a few corrections in the political history of Bengal based mainly on numismatic evidence. Fresh reading of the only gold coin of Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah records his independent authority in Sonargaon in 734 AH/1333 CE. This challenges all the earlier calculations of the reign period of this ruler. This study makes an intervention in the current historiography of Bengal and proposes 205 (1333 to 1538 CE) years of Independent Sultanate instead of 200 (1338-1358 CE) years, widely accepted so far. Additionally, this study claims that Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud Shah, first ruler of the Later Ilyas Shahi dynasty expressed his political sovereignty in the year of 832 AH/1428 CE. In Chapter Four it has been shown that in between thirteenth to mid-sixteenth century seven geo-political units grew in Bengal. Among these Lakhnauti, Pandua and XIII Gaur were the three capital cities or administrative headquarters which grew on the northern Pleistocene land (West Bengal, India). In this phase Sonargaon was the first independent political entity in the eastern and southeastern part of the delta (presently Bangladesh). An analysis of archaeological findings of the last four decades prove that Khalifatabad (Bagerhat) and Mahmudabad (Jhinaidaha) were two political units characterized as urban settlements inhabited by a significant number of people believing in Islam. These three urban settlements - Sonargaon, Khalifatabad and Mahmudabad - grew in the deltaic land where rivers made and unmade the human settlements in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries. Following this argument this thesis suggests a revision of Richard M. Eaton’s proposition regarding the spread and popularity of Islam in deltaic land. The last chapter presents a critical analysis on the Mughal capitals in Bengal. Among them Jahangirnagar and Murshidabad grew by the side of two big rivers - the Buriganga and the Bhagirathi. In the seventeenth-eighteenth century Mughal settlements as well as residential areas grew and expanded on the river banks where the Mughal elites of the province and the incoming European communities preferred to set up their own residential and commercial complexes to suit mainly their commercial interest. This thesis presents that in the eighteenth century (1703-1797 CE) 24 edifices were constructed in Jahangirnagar under the Naib Nazims. Thus the current thesis has challenged the earlier scholarship where it was widely accepted that with the shift of the diwani office to Murshidabad the growth and development of the city was checked, population gradually thinned and the physical growth of the city staggered. This monograph shows that the majority of the geo-political and cultural units of Bengal - Gaur, Tanda, Akbarnagar, Pandua, Satgaon and Murshidabad - grew on the XIV bank of the Ganges and its tributaries - the Padma and the Bhagirathi. Khalifatabad, Mahmudabad, Jahangirnagar were located beside two big rivers of the Delta. This thesis ends with a proposal that during this period rivers became an important means of transportation, prosperity, power and sovereignty. They played the most vital and dominant role in the rise, growth and in shaping the political centres of Bengal.