Sonargaon
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| Sonargaon Archaeological site of Bangladesh |
Sonargaon was a historic administrative, commercial and maritime center in Bengal. Situated at the heart of Ganges delta, near the old course of the Brahmaputra River, it was the seat of the medieval Muslim rulers and governors of eastern Bengal. Sonargaon was described by numerous historic travellers, including Ibn Battuta, Ma Huan, Niccolò de' Conti and Ralph Fitch, as a thriving center of trade and commerce on the silk route. It served as the capital of Sultan Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah, Isa Khan and the Baro-Bhuyan Confederacy.The area is located near the modern industrial river port of Narayanganj in Bangladesh. Today, the name Sonargaon survives as the Sonargaon Upazila (Sonargaon Subregion) in the region.
The name Sonargaon came as the Bangla version of the ancient name Suvarnagrama. Hindu ruler Danujamadhava Dasharathadeva shifted his capital to Suvarnagrama from Bikrampur sometime in the middle of the 13th century. In early 14th century, Hindu ruling in this area ended when Shamsuddin Firoz Shah (reigned 1301–1322) of Lakhnauti occupied and annexed it to his kingdom.
Muslim settlers first arrive in Sonargaon region in around 1281. Sharfuddin Abu Tawwamah, a medieval Sufi saint and Islamic philosopher came and settled here sometime between 1282 and 1287. He then established his Khanqah and founded a Madrasa.
Firoz Shah built a mint in Sonargaon from where a large number of coins were issued. When he died in 1322, his son, Ghiyasuddin Bahadur Shah, replaced him as the ruler. In 1324 Delhi Sultan, Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, declared war against him and after the battle, Bahadur Shah was captured and Bengal, including Sonargaon, became a province of Delhi Sultanate. The same year, Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq, son and successor of Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq, released him and appointed him as the governor of Sonargaon province.
Sonargaon is the eastern terminus of the Grand Trunk Road, which was built by the Pashtun emperor Sher Shah Suri, extended approximately 2500 kilometres from Bangladesh across northern India and Pakistan to Kabul in Afghanistan.
When Taj Khan Karrani was the independent Afghan ruler of Bengal, Isa Khan obtained an estate in Sonargaon and Maheswardi Pargana in 1564 as a vassal of the Karrani rulers. Isa Khan gradually increased his strength and in 1571 he was designated as the ruler of whole Bhati region. In 1575 he helped Daud Khan Karrani to fight with Mughal flotilla in the vicinity of Sonargaon.
Daud Khan Karrani died in the battle of Rajmahal against Mughals in 1576. Akbar then assigned Isa Khan as one of the Bara-Bhuiyans by making him the zamindar of Sonargaon. Since then he resisted Mughal's ruling in his area. With the help of allies, he stood defiant against Mughals in the battle against Subahdar Khan Jahan in 1578, Subahdar Shahbaz Khan in 1584 and Durjan Singh in 1597. Isa Khan died in September 1599. Then his son, Musa Khan, took control of Bhati region. But after the defeat of Musa Khan in 10 July 1610[13] by Islam Khan, the army general of Mughals, Sonargaon became one of the sarkars of Bengal subah. The capital of Bengal is then shifted to Jahangirnagar (later named Dhaka).