Sonargaon The administrative centre of eastern Bengal under the Muslim rulers of Bengal survives at present in the name of an upazila in the Narayanganj district and the 'golden village' (its literal meaning) is now a township about 27 kilometers to the southeast of Dhaka. It is difficult to locate exactly the medieval city, but from the extant remains it appears to have embraced a wide tract bounded on the east, west and south by the Meghna, the Shitalakhya and the Dhaleshwari respectively and on the north by the Brahmaputra.
Sonargaon's importance in the pre-Muslim period is borne out by its ancient name of Suvarnagrama, from which it is obvious that the Muslim version of the name is derived, and by the existence of langalband and Panchamighat, the two traditional holy bathing places of the Hindus, in this tract of land on the west bank of the old Brahmaputra. Suvarnavithi, mentioned in a 6th century land grant, the Ghugrahati copper-plate of Samacharadeva, has been taken to denote this area. The 13th century local Hindu ruler Danujamadhava Dasharathadeva (Raja danuj rai of Ziauddin Barani) may have shifted his capital to Suvarnagrama from vikramapura sometime in the middle of the century. With the Muslim occupation of the vanga area, Sonargaon continued to be the administrative centre of southeastern Bengal till the rise of dhaka.
Independent Hindu rule in Sonargaon came to an end with the annexation of the area to the Muslim principality of lakhnauti by shamsuddin firuz shah in the beginning of the 14th century AD.
Bara Sardar Bari, Sonargaon
Though the fortune of Sonargaon was under a temporary eclipse from its annexation to the kingdom of Lakhnauti till the rise of ghiyasuddin bahadur shah, the city continued to be important as a port and a mint town. Sonargaon rose to be the seat of an independent ruler under Ghiyasuddin Bahadur Shah, and after his fall it was the headquarters of the eastern province of Bengal under the Tughlaqs till 1338. Sonargaon emerged as the capital of an independent Sultanate under fakhruddin mubarak shah (1338-1349) and his son ikhtiyaruddin ghazi shah (1349-1352).
From the capture of Sonargaon by Shamsuddin iliyas shah (1352) down to the coming of the Mughals it was a provincial metropolis except for a period when it became a capital city under the house of isa khan Masnad-i-Ala. After the fall of musa khan (1611), Sonargaon became one of the sarkars of the Mughal subah of Bengal. With the establishment of the Mughal capital at Dhaka Sonargaon must have fallen fast into decay. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Panam-Nagar was developed in a part of medieval Sonargaon.
From the extant archaeological remains it is evident that an extensive Muslim settlement had grown over the entire Mograpara and Goaldi region, and perhaps the Muslim capital city developed in and around Mograpara on the northern bank of the Menikhali river extending towards Goaldi and Baidyer Bazaar. The Hindu capital city, presumably comprising the area between Panam-Nagar and Khasnagar, was not altogether abandoned during Muslim rule, and perhaps constituted the place of residence of the early Muslim governors.
By the second quarter of the fourteenth century Sonargaon developed into a commercial metropolis; seafaring boats could easily reach Sonargaon from west Asian and southeast Asian countries. ibn batuta describes Sonargaon as an important port city which had direct commercial relations with countries like China, Indonesia (Java) and the Maldives. The Chinese envoy ma huan also found Sonargaon a great commercial metropolis. Hou hien (1415) describes it as a fortified walled city with tanks, streets, bazaars, and as an emporium of trade where all goods were collected and distributed. ralph fitch (1586) described it as a brisk commercial centre. muslin produced in Sonargaon, especially its finest variety called khasa, had a worldwide reputation. With the loss of political status in the second decade of the seventeenth century Sonargaon gradually lost its commercial importance as well.
It rose to some eminence in the nineteenth century when Panam-Nagar was established as a trading centre in cotton fabrics, chiefly English piece goods. The extant remains of Panam-Nagar represent residential houses built by Hindu merchants following colonial style with inspiration derived from European sources.
Runins of Sonargaon palace
Sonargaon developed into a seat of Islamic learning under the versatile scholar Maulana sharfuddin abu tawwamah of Bokhara who came to Sonargaon (sometime between 1282 and 1287) and established there a khanqah and a madrasa wherein all branches of Islamic learning as well as secular sciences were taught and studied. This madrasa earned a great reputation throughout the subcontinent and attracted students from far and near. sharfuddin yahya maneri (R), the celebrated sufi scholar of Bihar, was a product of this madrasa. The present Dargahbari in Mograpara is possibly the site of that centre of learning.
In the later period shaikh alaul haq (d 1398), his grandson Shaikh Badr-i-Islam and great-grandson Shaikh Zahid imparted religious and mystical teaching in Sonargaon. The khanqah and madrasa founded by Abu Tawwamah appears to have been maintained by his spiritual successors and later by the renowned saint Shah ibrahim danishmand and his descendants like Shah Kamel, Shaikh Muhammad Yusuf and others. Sonargaon had once been a rendezvous of distinguished sufis and fakirs. There are references to the compilation of valuable works at Sonargaon, such as the Maqamat, a unique work on Islamic mysticism (tasawwuf) by Sharfuddin Abu Tawwamah; a Persian book on fiqh entitled Nam-i-Haq, either written by Abu Tawwamah or compiled (1304)) by one of his disciples on the basis of his teachings; an early fourteenth century work on fiqh entitled Majmu-i-Khani fi Ain-al-Ma'ani by one Kamal-i-Karim; the Tafsir-i-Tatarkhani and Fatwa-i-Tatarkhani compiled at the instance of Bahram Khan alias tatar khan, the Tughlaq governor of Sonargaon, and a Sanskrit dictionary Shabda-ratnavali compiled by Mathures, a court poet of Musa Khan.
The remains of the city of Sonargaon are not found in a well-defined composition. There remains now in Sonargaon that can be ascribed to the Hindu capital city except a deep muddy stagnant canal surrounding the site which appears to have originally been a moat for the protection of the city.
Main entarance of Bara Sardar Bari, Sonargaon
The existing remains are a few medieval buildings, mostly religious, and belonging to the Sultanate and Mughal periods, some Mughal bridges and a few residential buildings of the colonial period. The remains, within the Sonargaon upazila, on the northern side of the Dhaka-Chittagong highway are the khasnagar dighi, Kompani ka Kuthi (Neel Kuthi) at Dalalpur, Tomb of Pagla Sahib at Habibpur, goaldi mosque (1519) and abdul hamid's mosque (1433-36), Shah Langar's Tomb at Muazzampur (Mahjampur), Krori Bari at Aminpur, Aminpur Math, Damodardi Math, Misripura Math, Math at Mather Pukur Par, residential buildings at Panam-nagar and Sardar Bari (1901) at Isapur.
On the southern side of the Dhaka-Chittagong highway are the remains at Mograpara, such as, the Dargahbari complex with the Dargah building, Madrasa building, Fath Shah's Mosque (1484), Nahbat Khana, grave of Sharfuddin Abu Tawwamah (d 1300), Tomb of Shah Ibrahim Danishmand, Tomb of Shah Kamel, Tomb of Shaikh Muhammad Yusuf and the Tomb of Munna Shah Darwesh. The other remains belonging to this southern group are the Damdama at Mograpara. ghiyasuddin azam shah's tomb at Shah Chilapur (Sachilapur), Tomb of Ponkai Diwana at Gohatta, Panch Pir Dargah and Mosque at Bhagalpur, Yusufganj Mosque, and Sheikh Saheb's Mosque at Darugola. The remains in Bandar upazila are the bandar shahi mosque (1481) at Bandar proper, Baba Saleh's Mosque (1505) and Tomb of Baba Saleh (d 1506) at Salehnagar, Bandar Math, sonakanda fort (17th century), dewanbagh mosque (16th century) at Dewanbagh (Manwar Khar Bagh), and kadam rasul (1778-79) at Nabiganj.
The historic city of Sonargaon survives only in name. Sonargaon lost its eminence with the rise of Dhaka and by the second half of the nineteenth century it was reported to have 'dwindled to a village' with 'dense jungle'. But in about a century the area between the Sitalakhya and the Meghna, having communication facilities afforded by the Dhaka-Chittagong highway cutting through it, has turned it into a productive area with agricultural fields and industrial set-ups on both sides of the highway. The recent modern settlements on either side of the road, to the left towards Panam and Goaldi and to the right towards Mograpara and adjacent villages, are fast changing the environment and have given the area the look of a suburb.
[Muazzam Hussain Khan]
Bibliography ABM Husain (ed), Sonargaon-Panam, Dhaka, 1997.
Saint Martin, The coral Island
