Early contacts Rice-cultivating communities existed in Bengal since the second millennium BCE. The region was home to a large agriculturalist population, marginally influenced by
Dharmic religions.
Buddhism influenced the region in the first millennium. The Bengali language developed from
Apabhramsa,
Sanskrit,
Magadhi Prakrit between the 7th and 10th centuries. It once formed a single Indo-Aryan branch with
Assamese and
Oriya, before the languages became distinct. Centuries prior to the advent of Islam into the region, Bengal was a major center of Buddhism on the Indian Subcontinent. The area was under the rule of the Buddhist
Pala Empire for several centuries until its collapse and subsequent conquest by the Hindu
Sena Empire in the 1170s. In the preceding centuries Buddhism underwent a slow decline as Hindu kingdom gradually enveloped Buddhists states in the area and began of process of "de-Buddification" manifested by the reframing of Buddhist figures as Hindu avatars and the reincorporation of resistant Buddhist subjects into lower castes in society. As the Pala Empire's base of power was in Northern and Eastern Bengal, it is likely that these were areas with large Buddhist majorities which were likely heavily subjugated the Sena Empire. Historical evidences suggest the early Muslim traders and merchants visited Bengal while traversing the
Silk Road in the first millennium. One of the earliest mosques in South Asia is under excavation in northern Bangladesh, indicating the presence of Muslims in the area around the lifetime of
Muhammad. Starting in the 9th century, Muslim merchants increased trade with Bengali seaports. Islam first appeared in Bengal during Pala rule, as a result of increased trade between Bengal and the Arab
Abbasid Caliphate. Coins of the Abbasid Caliphate have been discovered in many parts of the region. The people of
Samatata, in southeastern Bengal, during the 10th-century were of various religious backgrounds. During this time, Arab geographer
Al-Masudi, who authored
The Meadows of Gold, travelled to the region and noticed a Muslim community of inhabitants. In addition to trade, Islam was also being introduced to the people of Bengal through the migration of Sufi missionaries prior to conquest. The earliest known Sufi missionaries were Syed Shah Surkhul Antia and his students, most notably
Shah Sultan Rumi, in the 11th century. Rumi settled in present-day
Netrokona, Mymensingh where he influenced the local ruler and population to embrace Islam.
Early Islamic kingdoms is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site While Bengal was under the
Hindu Sena Empire, subsequent Muslim conquests helped spread Islam throughout the region.
Bakhtiyar Khalji, a
Turkic Muslim general, defeated king
Lakshman Sen in 1206 CE and annexed large parts of Bengal to the
Delhi Sultanate. Khalji also mounted an
invasion of Tibet. Following this initial conquest, an influx of missionaries arrived in Bengal and many Bengalis began to adopt Islam as their way of life.
Sultan Balkhi and
Shah Makhdum Rupos settled in the present-day
Rajshahi Division in northern Bengal, preaching to the communities there. A community of 13 Muslim families headed by
Burhanuddin also existed in the northeastern Hindu city of
Srihatta (Sylhet), claiming their descendants to have arrived from
Chittagong. By 1303, hundreds of Sufi preachers led by
Shah Jalal aided the Muslim rulers in Bengal to
conquer Sylhet, turning the town into Jalal's headquarters for religious activities. Following the conquest, Jalal disseminated his followers across different parts of Bengal to spread Islam, and became a household name among Bengali Muslims.
Sultanate of Bengal in
Nizami Ganjavi's
Iskandarnama. The manuscript was produced during the reign of Sultan Nusrat Shah. , once the largest mosque in the Indian subcontinent , gentiles, called
Bengalis", 16th-century Portuguese illustration The establishment of a single united
Bengal Sultanate in 1352 by
Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah finally gave rise to a
"Bengali" socio-linguistic identity. The
Ilyas Shahi dynasty acknowledged
Muslim scholarship, and this transcended ethnic background.
Usman Serajuddin, also known as
Akhi Siraj Bengali, was a native of
Gaur in western Bengal and became the Sultanate's court scholar during Ilyas Shah's reign. Alongside Persian and Arabic, the sovereign Sunni Muslim nation-state also enabled the language of the Bengali people to gain patronage and support, contrary to previous states which exclusively favoured
Sanskrit,
Pali and
Persian. The converted Sultan
Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah funded the construction of Islamic seminaries as far as
Mecca and
Madina in the Middle East. The people of
Arabia came to know these institutions as
al-Madaris al-Bangaliyyah (
Bengali madrasas). The Bengal Sultanate was a melting pot of Muslim political, mercantile and military elites. During the 14th century, Islamic kingdoms stretched from
Muslim Spain in the west to Bengal in the east. Moroccan traveller
Ibn Battuta's diary is one of the best known accounts of the prelude to the Bengal Sultanate. Ibn Battuta visited Bengal during the reign of Sultan
Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah, a rebel governor of the Delhi Sultanate who established a city state in
Sonargaon. At the time, Bengal was divided into the three city states of Sonargaon,
Satgaon and
Lakhnauti. In 1352, the three city states were united by Ilyas Shah into a single, unitary, independent Bengal Sultanate. The creation of the Bengal Sultanate sparked several
Bengal-Delhi Wars, which resulted in Delhi recognising Bengal's independence. The
Ilyas Shahi dynasty consolidated Bengali statehood, the economy and diplomatic relations. A network of Mint Towns - provincial capitals which produced the Sultan's sovereign currency called the
taka - was established across Bengal. The Bengali state followed the Persian model of statecraft. Muslims from other parts of the world were imported for military, bureaucratic and household services. These immigrants included Turks from upper India who were originally recruited in Central Asia; as well as Abyssinians imported via East Africa into the Bengali port of Chittagong. Mosques included two categories, including multi-domed rectangular structures and single-domed square structures. A distinct style of Bengali
mihrabs,
minbars, terracotta
arabesque, and
do-chala roofs developed; this influence also spread to other regions. The Bengal Sultanate was ruled by five dynastic periods, with each period have a particular ethnic identity. The Ilyas Shahi dynasty was of
Turkic origins. It was replaced by the Bengali-origin dynasty of
Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah and
Shamsuddin Ahmad Shah for a few decades before being restored
Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah was born as Jadu, the son of Hindu King
Raja Ganesha. He later ruled most of Bengal as a converted Muslim. He maintained a good rapport with non-Muslims in his kingdom. According to an interpretation of a Sanskrit
sloka by D. C. Bhattacharya, Jalaluddin appointed Rajyadhar, a Hindu, as the commander of his army. He gained support of
Muslim scholars –
Ulama and the
Sheikhs. He reconstructed and repaired the mosques and other religious architectures destroyed by Raja Ganesha. In the 1490s, a series of
Abyssinian generals took turns in becoming the Sultan of Bengal. They were succeeded by the
Hussain Shahi dynasty which was of
Arab origin. They were in turn replaced by the
Pashtun rulers of the
Suri dynasty, who first acted as regional governors before restoring Bengali independence. The last dynasty, the
Karrani dynasty, was also of Pashtun origin. The sultanate period saw a flourishing of Islamic scholarship and the development of
Bengali literature. Scholars, writers and poets of sultanate-era Bengal included
Usman Serajuddin,
Alaul Haq,
Sheikh Nur Qutb Alam,
Alaol,
Shah Muhammad Sagir,
Abdul Hakim,
Syed Sultan, Qadi Ruknu'd-Din Abu Hamid Muhammad bin Muhammad al-'Amidi, Abu Tawwama,
Syed Ibrahim Danishmand, Syed Arif Billah Muhammad Kamel and Syed Muhammad Yusuf among others. Bengal's tradition of
Persian prose was acknowledged by
Hafez. The
Dobhashi tradition saw
Bengali transliteration of
Arabic and Persian words in Bengali texts to illustrate Islamic epics and stories. During the independent sultanate period, Bengal forged strong diplomatic relations with empires outside the subcontinent. The most notable of these relationships was with
Ming China and its emperor
Yongle. At least a dozen embassies were exchanged between China and Bengal. The Sultan of Bengal even gifted an East African giraffe to the Emperor of China as a tribute to China-Bengal relations. The Chinese Muslim admiral
Zheng He visited Bengal as an envoy of the Emperor of China. Bengali ships transported the embassies of
Sumatra,
Brunei and
Malacca to the port of
Canton. China and the
Timurid ruler of
Herat mediated an end to the
Bengal Sultanate-Jaunpur Sultanate War. The Sultan of Bengal also acknowledged the nominal authority of the
Abbasid caliph in
Cairo.
Portuguese India was the first European state entity to establish relations with the Bengal Sultanate. The Bengal Sultan permitted the opening of the
Portuguese settlement in Chittagong.
Conquests and vassal states Soon after its creation, the Bengal Sultanate sent the first Muslim army into
Nepal. Its forces reached as far as
Varanasi while pursuing a retreating Delhi Sultan.
Arakan was the most volatile neighbour of the Bengal Sultanate. In 1428, the forces of Bengal restored
Min Saw Mun as the king of Arakan after he fled to the court of Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah. According to traditional Arakanese history, Arakan became a tributary state of Bengal and its kings adopted Muslim titles to fashion themselves after Bengali Sultans. Arakan later shrugged off Bengali hegemony and restored full independence. It later invaded southeastern Bengal several times, sometimes with success and sometimes unsuccessfully. Arakan continued to mint its coins following the model of Bengali tanka for 300 years, even after the dissolution of the Bengal Sultanate. A total of 16 Arakanese kings used Muslim titles. The Bengal Sultanate controlled
Odisha at various points since the reign of
Ilyas Shah. During the reign of
Alauddin Hussain Shah, Bengal became an expanding regional empire. Under Hussain Shah, Bengali territory covered Arakan, Assam, Tripura, Orissa, Bihar and Jaunpur. Hussain Shah minted coins with the proclamation "conqueror of Kamrupa, Kamata, Jajnagar and Orissa". The
Pratapgarh Kingdom came under Bengali
suzerainty. The Hindu kingdom of
Chandradwip was annexed by the Hussain Shahi dynasty. In 1498, the Hussain Shahi dynasty dispatched an army under
Shah Ismail Ghazi to conquer the
Kamata Kingdom. The Bengal forces overthrew the
Khen dynasty. Bengali control of Assam extended into the
Brahmaputra Valley and up to
Hajo. The invasions of the Bengal Sultanate into Assam provided the basis for the formation of Assamese Muslims.
Maritime trade Bengali ships dominated the
Bay of Bengal and were the largest ships in the
Indian and
Pacific oceans. A royal vessel from Bengal could accommodate three tribute missions- from Bengal, Brunei and Sumatra- and was evidently the only vessel capable of such a task. European travellers like
Ludovico di Varthema,
Duarte Barbosa and
Tomé Pires wrote about the presence of a large number of wealthy Bengali merchants and shipowners in Malacca. The trade between Bengal and the
Maldives, based on rice and
cowry shells, was probably done on Arab-style
baghlah ships. The Chinese Muslim envoy
Ma Huan wrote about a flourishing shipbuilding industry and Bengal's significant seaborne trade. The
muslin trade in Bengal, the production of silk and the development of several other crafts were indicated in Ma Huan's list of items exported from Bengal to China. Bengali shipping co-existed with Chinese shipping until the latter withdrew from the Indian Ocean in the mid-15th-century. Bengali port cities like
Chittagong and
Satgaon were possibly
entrepots for importing and re-exporting goods to China.
Mughal period The
Mughal Empire eventually controlled the region under its
Bengal Subah viceregal province. The
Mughal Emperors considered Bengal their most prized province.
Emperor Akbar redeveloped the
Bengali calendar. In the 16th-century, many
Ulama of the Bengali Muslim intelligentsia migrated to other parts of the subcontinent as teachers and instructors of
Islamic knowledge such as Sheikh Ali Sher Bengali to
Ahmedabad, Usman Bengali to
Sambhal and Yusuf Bengali to
Burhanpur. The process of Islamization of eastern Bengal, now Bangladesh, is not fully understood due to limited documentation from the 1200s to 1600s, the period during which Islamization is believed to have occurred. There are numerous theories about how Islam spread in region; however, the overwhelming evidence is strongly suggestive of a gradual transition of the local population from Buddhism, Hinduism and other indigenous religions to Islam starting in the thirteenth century facilitated by Sufi missionaries (such as Shah Jalal in Sylhet for example) and later by Mughal agricultural reforms centered around Sufi missions. ). Pir Gazi was a Sufi preacher. Sufi-led villages were centers of Islamic conversion during the Mughal period. The factors facilitating conversion to Islam from Buddhism, Hinduism and indigenous religions, again is not fully understood. Lack of primary sources from that era have resulted in various hypotheses. A few decades following the Sena Conquest of the region, the Sena, themselves, were conquered by Bakhtiyar Khalji opening up the region to a greater influx of Sufi missionaries. This hypothesis would explain why the Islam spread faster in East Bengal than West Bengal. The Mughals granted landless peasants land around these missions in order to accelerate development of the fertile Ganges plain. This lead to greater concentrations of people in the area with more opportunities for Sufi missionaries to preach Islam. The projects were most evident in the
Bhati region of East Bengal, the most fertile part of the delta. Although the timeline is still debated, a popular theory posed by historian Richard Eaton poses that the Islamization of northern and eastern Bengal occurred in earnest after the Mughal conquest. At the time of the Mughal conquest of Bengal, most of East and North Bengal was still covered by dense forests and inhabited by indigenous communities who were marginally influenced by Dharmic religions and practised shifting cultivation. The Hindu descendants of these indigenous communities are today called
Namasudras and
Poundras in central and eastern Bengal, and
Rajbanshis in north Bengal. East Bengal became the center of the Muslim population in the eastern subcontinent and corresponds to modern-day Bangladesh. In the late 1980s Richard Eaton, in a book and a series of papers, raised awkward questions about the social liberation theory of conversion from Hinduism to Islam that have yet to be fully addressed, further endorsing Rahim's argument. In the late 19th century, when the first census was conducted on
Bengal region in the year of (1872), it was found that the number of Hindus are at (18m) and Muslims at (17.5m) were almost the same. According to the 1872 Census, only 1.52% or say 2.66 lakhs of the Bengali Muslim population claimed foreign ancestry.
British colonial period near
Kolkata. were from the Muslim community of the
Bengal Presidency The Bengal region was
annexed by the
East India Company (EIC) in 1757. In the following decades, Bengalis led numerous revolts against
Company rule. In the early 19th century,
Titumir led a peasant uprising against the East India Company. Meanwhile, the Bengali Muslim
Haji Shariatullah led the
Faraizi movement, which advocated
Islamic revivalism. The Faraizis sought to create a
caliphate and cleanse the region's Muslim society of what they deemed "un-Islamic practices". They were successful in galvanising the Bengali peasantry against the EIC. However, the movement experienced a crackdown after the suppression of the
Indian Rebellion of 1857 and lost impetus after the death of Haji Shariatullah's son
Dudu Miyan. Social and cultural leaders among Bengali Muslims during this period included
Munshi Mohammad Meherullah, who countered Christian missionaries, writers
Ismail Hossain Siraji and
Mir Mosharraf Hossain; and feminists
Nawab Faizunnesa and
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain.
Eastern Bengal and Assam (1905–1912) A precursor to the modern state of Bangladesh was the province of
Eastern Bengal and Assam in
British India. The province was created on 16 October 1905 by the
Viceroy of India Lord Curzon. The province covered present-day Bangladesh,
northeastern India and a part of West Bengal. It had a
Bengali Muslim majority.
Dacca, the former Mughal capital of Bengal, was declared by the British as the capital of Eastern Bengal and Assam. The province was established through the
first partition of Bengal. The British government cited administrative reasons for the creation of the new province. It promised increased investment in education and the economy of the new province. The partition galvanised
Muslim nationalism in South Asia and led to the formation of the
All India Muslim League in Dacca in 1906. It also stoked anti-Muslim sentiment and anti-British sentiment among Hindus. Growing opposition from the
Indian National Congress, which accused the British of a
divide and rule policy, caused the British government to reconsider the new provincial geography. During the
Delhi Durbar in 1911, King
George V announced that provinces would once again be reorganised. The first partition of Bengal was annulled; while Calcutta lost its status as the imperial capital of India. The imperial capital was shifted to New Delhi; while Calcutta became the capital of a reunited, albeit smaller, Bengal province. Assam was made a separate province. Orissa and Bihar were also separated from Bengal. As a compensation for Dacca, the British government established a
university for the city in 1921. During the short lifespan of the province, school enrolment increased by 20%. New subjects were introduced into the college curriculum, including Persian, Sanskrit, mathematics, history and algebra. All towns became connected by an inter-district road network. The population of the capital city Dacca rose by 21% between 1906 and 1911. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the British promoted the settlement of Muslim cultivators from densely populated East Bengal to farm untilled lands in Assam and other places. Therefore large numbers of Bengali Muslims from Mymensingh, Pabna and Rangpur districts were incentivised to come to lower Assam where there was cheap land available.
1947 Partition and Bangladesh ,
Tajuddin Ahmad,
Syed Nazrul Islam and others in 1970 An important moment in the history of Bengali
self-determination was the
Lahore Resolution in 1940, which was promoted by politician
A. K. Fazlul Huq. The resolution initially called for the creation of a
sovereign state in the "Eastern Zone" of
British India. However, its text was later changed by the top leadership of the
Muslim League. The Prime Minister of Bengal
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy proposed an independent, undivided, sovereign "Free State of Bengal" in 1947. Despite calls from liberal Bengali Muslim League leaders for an independent
United Bengal, the
British government moved forward with the
Partition of Bengal in 1947. The
Radcliffe Line made
East Bengal a part of the
Dominion of Pakistan. It was later renamed as
East Pakistan, with
Dhaka as its capital. The
East Pakistan Awami Muslim League was formed in Dhaka in 1949. The organisation's name was later secularised as the
Awami League in 1955 with the support o
Maulana Bhasani. The party was supported by the Bengali
bourgeoisie, agriculturalists, the middle class, and the
intelligentsia. Sir
Khawaja Nazimuddin,
Mohammad Ali of Bogra, and
H. S. Suhrawardy, all of whom were Bengali Muslims, each served as Pakistan's prime minister during the 1950s; however, all three were deposed by the military-industrial complex in West Pakistan. The
Bengali language movement in 1952 received strong support from Islamic groups, including the
Tamaddun Majlish.
Bengali nationalism increased in East Pakistan during the 1960s, particularly with the
Six point movement for autonomy. The rise of pro-democracy and pro-independence movements in East Pakistan, with
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as the principal leader, led to the
Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. Bangladesh was founded as a secular Muslim majority nation. In 1977, however, President
Ziaur Rahman, trying to consolidate his power under martial law, removed secularism from the constitution and replaced it with "a commitment to the values of Islam." In 2010, the
Bangladesh Supreme Court reaffirmed secular principles in the constitution. ==Science and technology==