161

The Governors and Sultans of Bengal

594–984/1198–1576

Bengal and Bihār

1. The governors for the Delhi Sultans, often ruling as independent sovereigns

2. The governors, and then independent rulers, of Balban’s line

3. The line of Ilyās Shāh

4. The line of Rājā Ganeśa (Ganesh)

5. The line of Ilyās Shāh restored

6. The domination of the Habashis

7. The line of Sayyid Husayn Shāh

8. The Sūrīs

9. The Kararanis

The conquest of the easternmost provinces of India, Bihār and Bengal, was the achievement of Mu‘izz al-Dīn Muḥammad Ghūrī’s commander Muḥammad Bakhtiyār Khaljī, who raided as far as the mountain barrier beyond which lay Tibet, and founded a capital at Lakhnawati or Gawr in the frontier zone between Bihar and Bengal. Subsequently, governors of the Delhi Sultans made other towns into centres of government, Sātgā‘on in south-western Bengal and Sonārgā‘on in the east (near modern Dacca or D́hākā), until Ilyās Shāh integrated all these into the independent Bengal sultanate. Because of the province’s richness and its distance from Delhi, Bengal had always been difficult for the Sultans to administer, and central government control was often sporadic. In the first half of the fourteenth century, Muslim troops penetrated across the Brahmaputra into Sylhet (Silhet) and Assam and to Chittagong on the Bay of Bengal, and it was from this time that a steady process of conversion to Islam of low-caste Hindus began, leading to the eventual preponderance of Muslims over much of Bengal.

In the time of Muḥammad b. Tughluq, Bengal came to be ruled by Fakhr al-Dīn Mubārak Shāh at Sonārgā‘on in the east and ‘Alā’ al-Dīn ‘All at Lakhnawatī in the west, and henceforth for over two centuries independent sultans controlled Bengal. Under the Ilyāsids, the Islamic arts and sciences flourished, and commerce in Bengal’s textiles and foodstuffs was encouraged. In the first decade of the fifteenth century, Ghiyāth al-Dīn A‘zam Shāh renewed old diplomatic and cultural links with China, and the growth of the port of Chittagong probably reflects increased trade with the lands farther east. The reign of the Ilyāsids was interrupted for over twenty years by the seizure of power by Rājā Ganeśa, a local Hindu landlord of Bengal; his son became a Muslim and ruled as Jalāl al-Dīn Aḥammad, and despite their Hindu origins the family was able to rule with some Muslim support. Under the restored Ilyāsids, the influence of Habashī or black palace guards grew, until in 892/1487 their commander, the eunuch Sulṣān Shāhzāda, murdered the last Ilyāsid and seized power for himself.

Order was eventually restored by Sayyid ‘Alā’ al-Din Husayn Shāh, whose enlightened rule came opportunely after the chaos of the Habashi period. Bihār was annexed; asylum given to the Sharqī ruler of Jawnpur, dispossessed by the Lōdīs of Delhi (see below, no. 164, and above, no. 160, 5), and the Jawnpur troops added to the Bengal army. The growth of a vernacular Bengali literature was a process continuing during these centuries, and royal encouragement is seen in Nuṣrat Shāh b. Sayyid Ḥusayn’s patronage of a Bengali translation of the Mahābhārata. The line of Sayyid Ḥusayn was ended by the meteoric rise of the Afghan chief Shīr Shāh Sūr, who took over Bengal and used it as a base from which to eject the Mughal Humāyūn from India (see above, no. 160, 6, and below, no. 175). But once the Mughals were firmly re-established in Lahore and Delhi and the Afghans defeated, Mughal influence began to be felt in Bengal. Sulaymān Kararānī, the former governor of southern Bihār, acknowledged the suzerainty of Akbar, and in 984/1576 Bengal was overrun and incorporated in the Mughal empire, becoming one of its ṣūbas or provinces.

Lane-Poole, 305–8; Zambaur, 286, 289.

EI² ‘Bangāla’ (A. H. Dani); ‘Hind. IV. History’ (J. Burton-Page).

R. C. Majumdar et al. (eds), The History and Culture of the Indian People. VI. The Delhi Sultanate, ch. 10 E.

M. Habib and K. A. Nizami (eds), A Comprehensive History of India. V. The Delhi Sultanat (A.D. 1206–1526), chs 2 iv and 19.

Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, The History of Bengal Muslim Period 1200–1757, Patna 1973, chs 2-7.

Mohammad Yusuf Siddiq, Arabian and Persian Texts of the Islamic Inscriptions of Bengal, Watertown MA 1991.

idem, al-Nuqūsh al-‘arabiyya fī ’l-Banghdl wa-atharuhd al-ḥaḍarī, Beirut 1996.