The known history of Cox's Bazar begins in the
Mughal period. On his way to
Arakan, when the Mughal Prince
Shah Shuja (1616–1660) passed through the hilly terrain of the present day Cox's Bazar, he was attracted to the scenic nature of the region. He commanded his forces to camp there. A place named
Dulahazara, meaning "one thousand palanquins", still exists in the area. Cox's Bazar is named after
Captain Hiram Cox, an officer of the East India Company, who was assigned with the charges of the current day Cox's Bazar and its adjacent areas. The town of Cox's Bazar was established in 1799 as a market town to honour Captain Cox. In 1854, Cox's Bazar was made a Sub Divisional headquarter in
Chittagong district under the Bengal Presidency of
British India. After the end of British rule in 1947, Cox's Bazar remained a part of
East Pakistan under
Pakistan till 1971.
Captain Advocate Fazlul Karim was the first chairman after independence from the British of Cox's Bazar municipality. He established the
Tamarisk Forest along the beach to draw tourism to the town and to protect the beach from the tide. He donated many of his father-in-law's and his own lands to establish a public library and town hall. In 1971, the wharf was used as a naval port by the
Pakistan Navy's gunboats. This and the nearby airstrip of the
Pakistan Air Force were the scene of intense shelling by the
Indian Navy during the
Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971. In the year 1984, Cox's Bazar was upgraded into a
District from a Sub Division under the Chittagong Division. Starting in 2017, a "mass human exodus" of the
Rohingya Muslim minority group from neighboring
Myanmar's
Rakhine State has led to Cox's Bazar housing the "world's largest refugee settlement" over the following years. In the first year, the
UNHCR estimated that 725,000 refugees had sought safety in Bangladesh. ==Upazila (Subdivisions)==