History of Rajshahi

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The history of Rajshahi, a city on the northern bank of the Padma River in northern Bangladesh, spans the ancient kingdom of Pundravardhana, successive Hindu and Buddhist dynasties, Muslim rule from the 13th century, the Mughal and British colonial periods, and the city's growth after Bangladeshi independence in 1971. The city is the headquarters of Rajshahi District and Rajshahi Division.

The surrounding Varendra tract was part of Pundravardhana, one of the earliest recorded state formations in ancient Bengal, and later came under the Maurya, Gupta, Pala and Sena rulers. Muslim rule was established in northwestern Bengal after the campaigns of Bakhtiyar Khilji in the early 13th century, and the spread of Islam in the surrounding countryside is traditionally associated with Sufi preachers, among them Shah Makhdum Rupos, whose arrival local tradition dates to 1288–89. Under Mughal rule the area was absorbed into the imperial revenue system, and the founding of the modern city is conventionally dated to about 1634. The name Rajshahi is usually explained as a compound of raj, denoting a raja or zamindar, and the Persian shahi, denoting royal status.

Under British rule the settlement, then known as Rampur-Boalia, became a centre of the silk and indigo trades; Rajshahi District was created in 1772 and the district headquarters moved to Rampur-Boalia in 1825. The founding of Rajshahi College in 1873 and of the Varendra Research Museum in 1910 established the town as an educational centre. Rajshahi became part of East Pakistan after the partition of 1947 and saw large-scale killings during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, including at the University of Rajshahi. In 2016 the city attracted international attention for a sharp fall in airborne particulate pollution, although later reporting has described a deterioration in local air quality.

Main article: Rajshahi

Ancient period

The Varendra tract of northern Bengal, which includes the area of present-day Rajshahi, has a documented history extending into antiquity. The region that now forms Rajshahi was part of the ancient territory of Pundravardhana, home to the Pundras, who are described in late Vedic literature as a non-Aryan people and who are said to have established one of the more prosperous Janapadas of ancient India by the 7th–8th centuries BCE. This early settlement lay within the Varendra (or Barind) tract, an elevated plateau of red clay soil bounded by the Ganges and Kosi rivers to the west, the Karatoya to the east and the Padma to the south. Archaeological evidence indicates that the riverine floodplains of Bengal have been inhabited for millennia, with sedentary settlement based on irrigated rice cultivation dating back at least 2,500 years.

The region's transition from a tribal polity to an imperial province began with the expansion of the Maurya Empire in the 3rd century BCE. The Mahasthangarh Brahmi inscription, the oldest written record found in Bangladesh, identifies the city of Pundranagara, at modern Mahasthan, as an administrative centre under Mauryan rule with a system for distributing grain during emergencies. Following the Mauryas the region came under the Gupta Empire of the 4th to 6th centuries CE, during which Pundravardhana became an administrative division known as a bhukti. Finds from this period in Rajshahi district include Gupta-style sculpture, such as a plainly carved Buddha image from Mandail.

The decline of the Guptas was followed by the rise of the Pala Empire in the 8th century, a period that O'Malley's gazetteer describes as a golden age of Varendra. The Pala kings, who were Buddhist, established an organised administration and supported the Varendra school of art, known for its black stone sculpture. Architectural work from the period includes the Somapura Mahavihara at Paharpur, in the neighbouring area of present-day Naogaon District, built by King Dharmapala (c. 770–810 CE), which became an important centre of Buddhist learning in South Asia. In the 12th century the Sena dynasty, originally from southern India, replaced the Palas and brought a shift toward orthodox Brahmanism; the Senas established a capital at Vijaynagara, near present-day Rajshahi city, and later moved it to Lakhnauti-Gaur.

Medieval period

Islam reached the Bengal delta by land at the start of the 13th century. In 1202–1204 CE Muhammad-i-Bakhtiyar Khilji, a Turkish officer, led a cavalry raid that overran northwestern Bengal. According to the traditional account, Bakhtiyar and his men entered the royal city of Nudiya disguised as horse dealers; the site of that city is disputed, and Van Schendel notes that it may have lain within the modern Rajshahi region rather than at Nabadwip. The Sena ruler Lakshmana Sena withdrew to eastern Bengal, and Bakhtiyar established a Muslim-ruled state with its capital at Lakhnauti-Gaur. For more than a century the region was administered by governors loosely subject to the Delhi sultans. Silk production in the area is recorded from this period, and the industry has continued into modern times.

Between 1338 and 1342 CE Bengal broke away from Delhi and was ruled by independent sultans for the next two centuries. The spread of Islam among the rural population during this era was assisted by Sufi preachers, who emphasised a direct spiritual relationship with the divine. Local tradition connects the Sufi saint Shah Makhdum Rupos with the settlement later known as Rampur-Boalia; his arrival is generally dated to 1288–89, though accounts vary.

In the early 15th century Raja Ganesha, a Hindu zamindar of Bhaturia, an area covering parts of the modern Rajshahi and Dinajpur districts, displaced the reigning sultan and took power in Bengal. His son Jadu converted to Islam and ruled as Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah, in a reign generally described as stable. The Bagha Mosque, built in 1523 CE during the reign of Nusrat Shah, is the district's principal surviving building from the Sultanate period; the jami mosque has ten domes, terracotta ornament and a raised platform intended as a prayer gallery for the ruler.

Mughal period (1526–1757)

The Mughal era brought significant administrative change, as the region moved from a frontier of local resistance to an integrated part of the imperial revenue system. Mughal control followed a long period of resistance by local Afghan and Hindu landholders known as the Baro Bhuiyans. Although the Mughals won a major victory in 1576, full control of the territory was not achieved until 1611–1612, during the viceroyalty of Islam Khan. To secure the province against Portuguese and Arakanese incursions, Islam Khan moved the provincial capital to Dhaka, renamed Jahangirnagar, in 1610. The territory was organised into a hierarchy of suba (province), sarkar (region), pargana (subdivision) and mouza (revenue village), the last of which remains a standard unit in Bangladesh.

The formal founding of the modern city, historically known as Rampur-Boalia, is generally dated to about 1634 on the basis of epigraphic records at the mausoleum of Shah Makhdum Rupos. The name "Rajshahi" is widely explained as a compound of raj, denoting a raja or zamindar, and the Persian shahi, denoting royal status. Under the zamindari system, local territorial chiefs retained their lands on condition that they collected and remitted a fixed share of revenue to the imperial treasury. These zamindars formed a secular aristocracy that maintained local order and mediated between the rural population and the imperial court.

The weakening of central Mughal authority in the early 18th century allowed the rise of the Natore Raj, a family of Barendra Brahmins who became the dominant zamindars of the region. The family's prominence began with the brothers Raghunandan and Ramjivan: Raghunandan, a senior official under Nawab Murshid Quli Khan, secured land grants for his brother, formalising the estate around 1712. At its height the Rajshahi zamindari was among the largest estates in Bengal, extending over nearly 13,000 square miles (34,000 km²) across parts of what are now Murshidabad, Nadia and Jessore. Rani Bhabani (r. 1748–1802) managed the estate for roughly half a century and is remembered for her religious patronage, including the construction of temples and public works.

British colonial period (1757–1947)

Following the East India Company's victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the region was brought into the colonial administrative framework, and Rajshahi District was formally established in 1772. The district was initially one of the largest in Bengal, corresponding to the Rajshahi zamindari and estimated in 1786 to cover nearly 13,000 square miles. The headquarters remained at Natore until 1825, when the seat was moved to Rampur-Boalia, the site of the modern city, on account of the prevalence of malaria at Natore.

Company rule met early armed resistance in the district during the Fakir–Sannyasi resistance, a movement of Muslim fakirs and Hindu sannyasis that began around 1760 and continued for four decades. Its targets included Company factories and the revenue offices of zamindars loyal to the new administration; in one episode the rebels attacked the Company kuthi at Rampur Boalia and captured its factory chief. In the early 20th century the town became a centre of the Swadeshi movement, with local leaders and students taking part in boycotts of British goods and institutions.

During the 18th and 19th centuries Rajshahi was known for its silk trade, and the city is still commonly called the Silk City. The Dutch were the first Europeans to establish a significant presence, building a trading post known as the Bara Kuthi on the bank of the Padma, which the British later took over. The district was also a centre of indigo production, with numerous factories until the industry declined in the late 19th century following the introduction of synthetic dyes.

Several institutions founded in the colonial period shaped the town's later reputation as an educational centre. Rajshahi Collegiate School was established in 1828 and Rajshahi College in 1873, the latter becoming one of the leading colleges in North Bengal. The Varendra Research Museum, founded in 1910 as a private initiative by local aristocrats and scholars, was the first museum of its kind in East Bengal. The Sardaha Police Academy was established in 1912 and continues to serve as a training centre for the national police.

Partition and East Pakistan (1947–1971)

Following the Partition of India in 1947, Rajshahi became part of East Pakistan. Partition produced large-scale population movement, with Muslim migrants arriving from India and many Hindu families leaving for West Bengal, altering the city's demographic composition. The city retained its administrative role in North Bengal as the headquarters of Rajshahi Division.

The years immediately after partition saw sustained peasant activism in the greater Rajshahi region. The Tebhaga movement, a campaign by sharecroppers for a larger share of the harvest, took hold around Nachole, then a police station of Rajshahi district and now in Chapai Nawabganj District, where it was led by the communist organiser Ila Mitra among Santal and Bengali cultivators. After a clash between peasants and police on 5 January 1950, a large police force was deployed to the area, Mitra was arrested, and she was later tried for treason and sentenced to life imprisonment in Rajshahi Central Jail.

The establishment of the University of Rajshahi on 6 July 1953 was a significant development for a region considered poorly served by higher education, the only university in the province until then being in the capital. The university became home to a community of scholars and students who contributed to intellectual life in East Pakistan, and the Varendra Research Museum was placed under its jurisdiction in 1964. Rajshahi Medical College, which had begun as a private medical school in 1949 and became a government college in 1954, was launched as a full medical college in 1958. Rajshahi Engineering College, the forerunner of the Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology, followed in 1964.

Rajshahi was also a centre of political activity during the Pakistan period, particularly during the Bengali language movement of 1952, when students from local colleges and the university joined protests and strikes against the imposition of Urdu as the sole state language. Unrest continued through the 1960s as the city became a base for the autonomy movement led by the Awami League and for the mass protests against the government of Ayub Khan.

Bangladesh Liberation War (1971)

Fighting broke out in Rajshahi on 25–26 March 1971 as the Pakistan Army moved to seize control from supporters of the Awami League. The city was initially held by irregular resistance forces supported by the local population, while the Pakistani garrison remained in the Rajshahi Cantonment on the northern edge of the city. Early resistance in the surrounding countryside included villagers, often armed only with clubs and stones, clashing with small groups of Pakistani soldiers.

During the nine-month war the Pakistan Army established a camp at Zoha Hall of the University of Rajshahi, where large numbers of people were killed and buried in mass graves in the adjacent playground. Killings also took place at the Sardaha Police Academy and in villages such as Sonaikandi, and freedom fighters fought a series of engagements with Pakistani forces across the district, including an attack on an army patrol boat near Tahirpur in August 1971. In the final days of the conflict, pro-Pakistan militias carried out targeted killings of members of the city's intelligentsia.

Rajshahi was liberated following the surrender of Pakistani forces on 16 December 1971. The war left substantial damage to bridges and other infrastructure across the country. Memorials were subsequently built at the university, among them the sculpture Sabash Bangladesh.

Since 1971

Rajshahi Municipality, formed on 1 April 1876, was converted into a municipal corporation on 13 August 1987 and given city corporation status in 1991. Rajshahi Town Development Authority, later the Rajshahi Development Authority, had been created in 1976 to guide the expansion of the urban area. Post-war development concentrated on restoring connectivity and on the city's established economic base in sericulture and agriculture.

The city's institutional base expanded after independence. Rajshahi Engineering College became the Bangladesh Institute of Technology, Rajshahi, in 1986 and was upgraded to the Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology in 2003. The region is also associated with gambhira folk performance and with mango cultivation, including the Fazli and Himsagar varieties. Rajshahi silk was registered as a geographical indication in September 2017, and the certificate was formally issued in June 2021.

From the early 2000s the city corporation pursued a series of environmental measures, including tree planting under a "zero soil" programme, the introduction of battery-powered rickshaws in 2004, daytime restrictions on heavy vehicles in the city centre, and changes to brick kiln technology. Drawing on World Health Organization data, The Guardian reported in 2016 that concentrations of PM₁₀ particulates in the city had fallen from 195 micrograms per cubic metre in 2014 to about 64 in 2016, the largest such reduction recorded worldwide over that period. Later assessments have been more critical. A 2023 fact-check by Dismislab found that claims describing Rajshahi as the cleanest city in Asia were unsupported, noting that the 2016 finding concerned the rate of improvement rather than absolute air quality, and in 2026 The Business Standard described a marked deterioration in the city's air and noise pollution, attributing it to unplanned construction and weak urban management.

Sources

• Gait, E. A. (1909). The Imperial Gazetteer of India: Provincial Series, Bengal, Vol. I. Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing. Search this book on
• Nelson, W. H. (1923). Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Rajshahi 1912–22. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot. Search this book on
• O'Malley, L. S. S. (1916). Bengal District Gazetteers: Rajshahi. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot. Search this book on
• Van Schendel, Willem (2009). A History of Bangladesh. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86174-8. Search this book on

Further reading

• Eaton, Richard M. (1993). The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-20507-9. Search this book on

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