Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c24.5

c24.5

It is usually believed that the fame and prosperity of Dacca are not older than the days of the Great Mughals. We know that the city is not mentioned in any record of the pre-Muslim period of Indian history. For a few centuries before and after the Muslim conquest of West Bengal in the beginning of the thirteenth century, the celebrated city of Vikramapura was the administrative headquarters of East Bengal. There is difference of opinion as regards the location of this city ; but some authors appear to be right in holding that it was washed away in the early medieval period by the waters of the Padmā whose erosive activities in the neighbourhood of Dacca have earned for her the name Kirtināśā, literally meaning ‘destroyer of fame (i.e., the fame-producing works of men)’. Nothing is known about the existence of the city of Dacca even long after the expansion of Muslim rule over East Bengal. During this period the neighbouring city of Suvarṇagrāma or Sonārgāon became the political centre of East Bengal. In the early years of the seventeenth century, during the reign of the Mughal emperor Jahāngīr, Sheikh ’Alāuddīn Islām Khān (1608-13 A.D.) was appointed governor of the Subah of Bengal. Islām Khān transferred the provincial capital from Rājmahal to Dacca where he built a brick fort and a palace. It has been said that Islām Khān’s desire to subdue the Portuguese and Arakanese pirates, who were ravaging South-East Bengal about that time, was the main cause of the transference of the provincial headquarters to Dacca. The new capital of the province was styled Jahāngīr-nagar after the reigning Mughal emperor. The fame and prosperity of Dacca began from this time.