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137-419: Bengali Muslims ( Bengali : বাঙালি মুসলমান ; pronounced [baŋali musɔlman] ) are adherents of Islam who ethnically, linguistically and genealogically identify as Bengalis . Comprising about two-thirds of the global Bengali population, they are the second-largest ethnic group among Muslims after Arabs . Bengali Muslims make up the majority of Bangladesh 's citizens, and are the largest minority in

274-728: A French revision between 1966 and 1974. This revision was published by the Université Libanaise in Beirut and consists of five volumes. Versions of the source text by Mas'udi have been published in Arabic for hundreds of years, mainly from presses operating in Egypt and Lebanon . One English version is the abridged The Meadows of Gold: The Abbasids , published in 1989, and was translated and edited by Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone. According to this edition's introduction, their English translation

411-525: A Muslim majority. Tripura , a north-eastern state of India has around 3.8 lakh Bengali Muslim population, or say 9% as of 2021. The Rohingya community in western Myanmar have significant Bengali Muslim heritage. A large Bengali Muslim diaspora is found in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf , which are home to several million expatriate workers from South Asia. A more well-established diaspora also resides in

548-499: A Muslim"). 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

685-566: A bare majority of the population of Bengal proper (50.2 percent compared with the Hindus at 48.5 percent). However, in the eastern part of Bengal, Muslims were thick on the ground. The proportions of Muslims in Rajshahi, Dhaka and Chittagong divisions were 63.2, 63.6 and 67.9 percent respectively. The debate draws on the writings of some late nineteenth-century authors, but in its current form was initially formulated in 1963 by M.A. Rahim. Rahim suggested that

822-492: A bid to lessen this burden on young learners, efforts have been made by educational institutions in the two main Bengali-speaking regions (West Bengal and Bangladesh) to address the opaque nature of many consonant clusters, and as a result, modern Bengali textbooks are beginning to contain more and more "transparent" graphical forms of consonant clusters, in which the constituent consonants of a cluster are readily apparent from

959-551: A century, the newer English version has received mixed reviews. The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies' review suggests that although the English version leaves out several passages of Pellat's edited version the book still retains important historical text and the passages omitted "are digressions from the main story and interrupt its flow." The Journal of the American Oriental Society , however, takes issue with

1096-471: 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. The Bengal region

1233-590: A different word from a speaker of Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, even though both words are of native Bengali descent. For example, the word salt is লবণ lôbôṇ in the east which corresponds to নুন nun in the west. Bengali exhibits diglossia , though some scholars have proposed triglossia or even n-glossia or heteroglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing have emerged, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax : Linguist Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar categorises

1370-480: A diphthong. The total number of diphthongs is not established, with bounds at 17 and 31. An incomplete chart is given by Sarkar (1985) of the following: In standard Bengali, stress is predominantly initial. Bengali words are virtually all trochaic ; the primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the word, while secondary stress often falls on all odd-numbered syllables thereafter, giving strings such as in সহযোগিতা shô -hô- jo -gi- ta "cooperation", where

1507-672: A large scale and were communally limited. Owing to Bengal's geographic location, Bengali areas bordering non-Bengali regions have been influenced by each other. Small numbers of people in Midnapore , which borders Odisha , have used the Odia script to write in Bengali. In the border areas between West Bengal and Bihar , some Bengali communities historically wrote Bengali in Devanagari , Kaithi and Tirhuta . In Sylhet and Bankura , modified versions of

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1644-669: A major scale. A huge mosque called the Adina Mosque was built following the design of the Great Mosque of Damascus . A distinct Bengali Muslim architectural style developed, with terracotta and stone buildings showing a fusion of Persian and Bengali elements. 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

1781-660: A majority in Bangladesh speaks dialects notably different from SCB. Some dialects, particularly those of the Chittagong region, bear only a superficial resemblance to SCB. The dialect in the Chittagong region is least widely understood by the general body of Bengalis. The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety – often, speakers are fluent in Cholitobhasha (SCB) and one or more regional dialects. Even in SCB,

1918-432: A minaret or floral design enshrining the word " Allah " which means "God" in Arabic. Rickshaw and rickshaw painting of Bangladesh are listed as ' intangible heritage ' by UNESCO. As a people's craft, of Bengal cloth architecture has seen transformation in the past decade for open-air public functions such as melas and religious gatherings like urs and waz-mahfil and Eidgahs for Eid prayers. The Patua of Bangladesh are

2055-514: A part in the adoption of the English alphabet to write Bengali, with certain social media influencers publishing entire novels in Roman Bengali. The Meadows of Gold The Meadows of Gold is considered unique in medieval Islamic history. Due to its reliance on and references to Islam, the style of the book makes up an example of what constitutes Islamic historiography . A first version of

2192-562: A rounded total of 280 million) worldwide. The Bengali language is native to the region of Bengal , which comprises the present-day nation of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal . Besides the native region it is also spoken by the Bengalis living in Tripura , southern Assam and the Bengali population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Bengali is also spoken in

2329-581: A significant proportion of Bengal's Muslims were not Hindu converts but were descendants of 'aristocratic' immigrants from various parts of the Muslim world. Specifically, he estimated that in 1770, of about 10.6 million Muslims in Bengal, 3.3 million (about 30 percent) had 'foreign blood'. 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

2466-606: A single, unitary, independent Bengal Sultanate. The creation of the Bengal Sultanate sparked several Bengal-Delhi Wars , which resulted in Delhi recognizing 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

2603-408: A special diacritic, called the hôsôntô (্) , may be added below the basic consonant grapheme (as in ম্ [m] ). This diacritic, however, is not common and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation. The abugida nature of Bengali consonant graphemes is not consistent, however. Often, syllable-final consonant graphemes, though not marked by a hôsôntô , may carry no inherent vowel sound (as in

2740-575: A state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan . On 21 February 1952, five students and political activists were killed during protests near the campus of the University of Dhaka ; they were the first ever martyrs to die for their right to speak their mother tongue. In 1956, Bengali was made a state language of Pakistan. 21 February has since been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh and has also been commemorated as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO every year since 2000. In 2010,

2877-501: A unique community, in that their traditional occupation is the painting which is known as Patachitra and modelling of Hindu idols, yet many of them are Muslims. Gazir Pata (scroll of Gazi Pir ) is the most famous scroll painting made by Bengali Patuas . The weaving industry of Bengal has prospered with the help of the Muslims natives. The Bengali origin Jamdani is believed to be a fusion of

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3014-446: A valuable part of his work." And that "In contrast to Tabari , who provides little or no information on the lands and peoples of his own day, Mas'udi often corroborated or rejected geographical and other data acquired second-hand." In addition the book is unique in medieval Islamic history for its interest in other cultures and religions as scientific and cultural curiosities. According to Lunde & Stone's introduction, this outlook

3151-463: A vowel in isolation from any preceding or following consonant, the independent form of the vowel is used. For example, in মই [moj] "ladder" and in ইলিশ [iliʃ] "Hilsa fish", the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent form ি) . A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realised using its independent form. In addition to the inherent-vowel-suppressing hôsôntô , three more diacritics are commonly used in Bengali. These are

3288-494: Is Bangladesh's national march, written by The National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bengali in 1928. It was adopted as the national marching song by the Bangladeshi government in 1972. Additionally, the first two verses of Vande Mataram , a patriotic song written in Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee , was adopted as the "national song" of India in both the colonial period and later in 1950 in independent India. Furthermore, it

3425-468: Is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting nine vowels and two diphthongs , and thirty-nine graphemes representing consonants and other modifiers. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. The letters run from left to right and spaces are used to separate orthographic words . Bengali script has a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the graphemes that links them together called মাত্রা matra . Since

3562-602: Is a major "characteristic that distinguishes Mas'udi from other Muslim historians." The contents of the Lunde & Stone version are broken into small vignettes which take up less than a full page of text in most cases. In addition are several pages of poetry. The Lunde & Stone edition focuses primarily on the Abbasid period in modern-day Iraq and begins with a story involving the Caliph al-Mansur ( r.  754–775 ) and ends with

3699-610: Is a person of ethnic and linguistic heritage from the Bengal region in South Asia speaking the Indo-Aryan Bengali language . Islam arrived in the first millennium and influenced the native Bengali culture . The influx of Persian, Turkic, Arab and Mughal settlers contributed further diversity to the cultural development of the region. The Muslim population in Bengal further rose with the agricultural and administrative reforms during

3836-562: Is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas ( Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America, the Middle East and other regions. Bengali was accorded the status of a classical language by the government of India on 3 October 2024. It is the second most spoken and fourth fastest growing language in India , following Hindi in the first place, Kashmiri in the second place, and Meitei ( Manipuri ), along with Gujarati , in

3973-400: Is an abugida , a script with letters for consonants, with diacritics for vowels, and in which an inherent vowel (অ ô ) is assumed for consonants if no vowel is marked. The Bengali alphabet is used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India (Assam, West Bengal, Tripura). The Bengali alphabet is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE (or 10th–11th century). It

4110-668: Is believed by many that the national anthem of Sri Lanka ( Sri Lanka Matha ) was inspired by a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore , while some even believe the anthem was originally written in Bengali and then translated into Sinhala . After the contribution made by the Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force in the Sierra Leone Civil War under the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone ,

4247-699: Is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects. During the standardisation of Bengali in the 19th century and early 20th century, the cultural centre of Bengal was in Kolkata , a city founded by the British. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia and Kushtia District . There are cases where speakers of Standard Bengali in West Bengal will use

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4384-575: Is heavily edited and contains only a fragment of the original manuscript due to the editors' own personal research interests and focuses almost exclusively on the Abbasid history of Mas'udi. Their introduction also outlines how the editors relied mainly on the Pellat revision in French and are therefore mainly working from the French translation with the Arabic source text as a background guide. Another English version

4521-404: Is known as Apabhraṃśa , by the end of the first millennium. The Bengali language evolved as a distinct language over the course of time. Though some archaeologists claim that some 10th-century texts were in Bengali, it is not certain whether they represent a differentiated language or whether they represent a stage when Eastern Indo-Aryan languages were differentiating. The local Apabhraṃśa of

4658-463: Is not fully understood. Lack of primary sources from that era have resulted in various hypotheses. Generally modern prevailing hypotheses about the early stages of Islamification of East Bengal focus on Sufi missionaries capitalizing on disaffected Buddhists and other indigenous groups following the initial conquest of the area by the Brahmin and Kshatriya dominated Sena Empire followed a few decades later by

4795-565: 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

4932-477: Is set out below in the International Phonetic Alphabet (upper grapheme in each box) and romanisation (lower grapheme). Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs , combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable . Two of these, /oi̯/ and /ou̯/ , are the only ones with representation in script, as ঐ and ঔ respectively. /e̯ i̯ o̯ u̯/ may all form the glide part of

5069-405: Is the fifth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world. It is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language . Bengali is the official , national , and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh , with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken language in India . It

5206-646: Is the state religion and commands the demographic majority. The Indian state of West Bengal is home to an estimated 23-24 million Bengali Muslims as per 2021 estimation, rest 6-7 million Muslims are Urdu and Surjapuri speaking Muslims. Two districts in West Bengal ;– Murshidabad and Maldah have a Muslim majority and North Dinajpur has a plurality. The Indian state of Assam has over 9   million Bengali Muslims out of 13 million Muslim population in Assam. Nine out of thirty-three districts in Assam have

5343-672: Is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam . It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal , and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar , Arunachal Pradesh , Delhi , Chhattisgarh , Meghalaya , Mizoram , Nagaland , Odisha and Uttarakhand . Bengali

5480-503: 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 . 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

5617-500: The Aesop's Fables in Bengali was printed using Roman letters based on English phonology by the Scottish linguist John Gilchrist . Consecutive attempts to establish a Roman Bengali have continued across every century since these times, and have been supported by the likes of Suniti Kumar Chatterji , Muhammad Qudrat-i-Khuda , and Muhammad Enamul Haq . The Digital Revolution has also played

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5754-606: The Arabic , Persian , and Turkic languages . The arrival of merchants and traders from the Middle East and Turkestan into the Buddhist -ruling Pala Empire , from as early as the 7th century, gave birth to Islamic influence in the region. In the 13th century, subsequent Arab Muslim and Turco-Persian expeditions to Bengal heavily influenced the local vernacular by settling among the native population. Bengali absorbed Arabic and Persian influences in its vocabulary and dialect, including

5891-552: 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 travelers 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

6028-447: The Bhati region of East Bengal, the most fertile part of the delta. This made East Bengal a thriving melting pot with strong trade and cultural networks. It was the most prosperous part of the subcontinent. East Bengal became the center of the Muslim population in the eastern subcontinent and corresponds to modern-day Bangladesh. According to the 1881 Census of Bengal, Muslims constituted

6165-468: The Constitution of Bangladesh states Bengali to be the sole official language of Bangladesh. The Bengali Language Implementation Act, 1987 , made it mandatory to use Bengali in all records and correspondences, laws, proceedings of court and other legal actions in all courts, government or semi-government offices, and autonomous institutions in Bangladesh. It is also the de facto national language of

6302-521: 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 reorganized. The first partition of Bengal was annulled; while Calcutta lost its status as the imperial capital of India. The imperial capital

6439-564: The Kaithi script had some historical prominence, mainly among Muslim communities. The variant in Sylhet was identical to the Baitali Kaithi script of Hindustani with the exception of Sylhet Nagri possessing matra . Sylhet Nagri was standardised for printing in c.  1869 . Up until the 19th century, numerous variations of the Arabic script had been used across Bengal from Chittagong in

6576-550: 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

6713-701: The Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were influential in the first millennium when Bengal was a part of the Greater Magadhan realm. The local varieties had no official status during the Gupta Empire , and with Bengal increasingly becoming a hub of Sanskrit literature for Hindu priests, the vernacular of Bengal gained a lot of influence from Sanskrit. Magadhi Prakrit was also spoken in modern-day Bihar and Assam , and this vernacular eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi . Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what

6850-520: The Nadia region . Bengali shows a high degree of diglossia , with the literary and standard form differing greatly from the colloquial speech of the regions that identify with the language. Modern Bengali vocabulary is based on words inherited from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, along with tatsamas and reborrowings from Sanskrit and borrowings from Persian , Arabic , Austroasiatic languages and other languages with which it has historically been in contact. In

6987-642: 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,

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7124-590: The University of Karachi (established by East Pakistani politicians before Independence of Bangladesh ) also offers regular programs of studies at the Bachelors and at the Masters levels for Bengali Literature. The national anthems of both Bangladesh ( Amar Sonar Bangla ) and India ( Jana Gana Mana ) were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore . Notuner Gaan known as " Chol Chol Chol"

7261-499: The boldface represents primary and secondary stress. Native Bengali words do not allow initial consonant clusters ; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e., one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). Many speakers of Bengali restrict their phonology to this pattern, even when using Sanskrit or English borrowings, such as গেরাম geram (CV.CVC) for গ্রাম gram (CCVC) "village" or ইস্কুল iskul (VC.CVC) for স্কুল skul (CCVC) "school". The Bengali-Assamese script

7398-557: The phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalised vowels and an alveolar articulation of what are categorised as the "cerebral" consonants (as opposed to the postalveolar articulation of western Bengal). Some varieties of Bengali, particularly Sylheti , Chittagonian and Chakma , have contrastive tone ; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong

7535-526: The 1170s. This was an era of significant Buddhist-Brahmin religious conflict as they represented diametrically opposite camps in the Dharmic tradition with the Buddhist focus on equality threatening the Brahmin caste-based power structure. 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

7672-558: The 16th century, Portuguese missionaries began a tradition of using the Roman alphabet to transcribe the Bengali language. Though the Portuguese standard did not receive much growth, a few Roman Bengali works relating to Christianity and Bengali grammar were printed as far as Lisbon in 1743. The Portuguese were followed by the English and French respectively, whose works were mostly related to Bengali grammar and transliteration. The first version of

7809-473: 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,

7946-435: The 17th and 18th centuries. Today, the weaving of Jamdani is classified by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage . Modern science was begun in Bengal during the period of British colonial rule. Railways were introduced in 1862, making Bengal one of the earliest regions in the world to have a rail network. For the general population, opportunities for formal science education remained limited. The colonial government and

8083-593: 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

8220-487: The 19th and 20th centuries, there were two standard forms of written Bengali: In 1948, the government of Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the sole state language in Pakistan, giving rise to the Bengali language movement . This was a popular ethnolinguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh ), which arose as a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengalis and their desire to promote and protect spoken and written Bengali's recognition as

8357-421: The 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. The ancestor of Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty . During the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterised by the elision of the word-final অ ô and the spread of compound verbs, which originated from the Sanskrit Schwa . Slowly, the word-final ô disappeared from many words influenced by

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8494-493: 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

8631-424: The Bengali elite established several institutes for science education. The Nawabs of Dhaka established Ahsanullah School of Engineering which later became the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology . Qazi Azizul Haque pioneered fingerprint classification . In the second half of the 20th century, the Bengali Muslim American Fazlur Rahman Khan became one of the most important structural engineers in

8768-401: The Bengali equivalent of a full stop – have been adopted from Western scripts and their usage is similar. Unlike in Western scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, etc.) where the letter forms stand on an invisible baseline, the Bengali letter-forms instead hang from a visible horizontal left-to-right headstroke called মাত্রা matra . The presence and absence of this matra can be important. For example,

8905-426: The Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments , but carry an "inherent" vowel and thus are syllabic in nature. The inherent vowel is usually a back vowel , either [ɔ] as in মত [m ɔ t] "opinion" or [o] , as in মন [m o n] "mind", with variants like the more open [ɒ] . To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it,

9042-431: The Caliph Harun al-Rashid ( r.  786–809 ) and his Barmakid advisors. These stories from Masudi are key elements in several English-language historical non-fiction books about Harun al-Rashid, including Hugh N. Kennedy 's When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World , André Clot 's Harun al-Rashid and the World of The Thousand and One Nights and H. St. John Philby 's Harun Al-Rashid . Another significant portion of

9179-422: 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

9316-434: The Indian states of West Bengal , Tripura and Assam . They speak or identify the Bengali language as their mother tongue . The majority of Bengali Muslims are Sunnis who follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence. The Bengal region was a supreme power of the medieval Islamic East. European traders identified the Bengal Sultanate as "the richest country to trade with". Bengal viceroy Muhammad Azam Shah assumed

9453-442: The Mughal period, particularly in eastern Bengal. Today, most Bengali Muslims live in the modern country of Bangladesh, the world's fourth largest Muslim-majority country, along with the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam. The majority of Bengali Muslims are Sunnis who follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence. There are also minorities of Shias and Ahmadiyas , as well as people who identify as non-denominational (or "just

9590-412: 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. A highly commercialized and monetized economy evolved. Islamic architecture was introduced on

9727-457: The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Pakistan . The first Bengali Muslim settlers in the United States were ship jumpers who settled in Harlem , New York and Baltimore , Maryland in the 1920s and 1930s. Surnames in Bengali Muslim society reflect the region's cosmopolitan history. They are mainly of Arabic and Persian origin, with a minority of Bengali surnames. Zainul Abedin, who's better known as Shilpacharya (Master of Art)

9864-467: The ancient cloth-making techniques of Bengal with the muslins produced by Bengali Muslims of Dhaka since the 14th century. Jamdani is the most expensive product of traditional Bengali looms since it requires the most lengthy and dedicated work. The traditional art of weaving jamdani was declared a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013 and Bangladesh received geographical indication (GI) status for Jamdani Sari in 2016. Sheikh Zainuddin

10001-660: The arrival of Bakhtiyar Khalji of the Delhi Sultanate in the early 1200s and the later agrarian reforms of the Mughal Empire in the 1500s. 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

10138-413: The author had heard or had read elsewhere. Due to its reliance on and references to Islam this style of history writing makes up an example of what constitutes Islamic historiography in general. Masudi also contributed an important role in this historicity by adding the importance of eye-witnessing a place or event in order to strengthen its veracity. Khalidi states that "Mas'udi's own observations form

10275-536: The basis of modern standard colloquial Bengali. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh ( Barisal , Chittagong , Dhaka and Sylhet Divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal and western Bangladesh are pronounced as fricatives . Western alveolo-palatal affricates চ [ tɕɔ ] , ছ [ tɕʰɔ ] , জ [ dʑɔ ] correspond to eastern চ [tsɔ] , ছ [tsʰɔ~sɔ] , জ [dzɔ~zɔ] . The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on

10412-497: The book was allegedly completed in the year 947 AD and the author spent most of his life adding and editing the work. The first European version of The Meadows of Gold was published in both French and Arabic between 1861 and 1877 by the Societe Asiatique of Paris by Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille . For over 100 years this version was the standard version used by Western scholars until Charles Pellat published

10549-478: 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. 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

10686-512: The conquest, Jalal disseminated his followers across different parts of Bengal to spread Islam, and became a household name among Bengali Muslims. 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 ,

10823-469: The consonant which comes first is put on top of or to the left of the one that immediately follows. In these ligatures, the shapes of the constituent consonant signs are often contracted and sometimes even distorted beyond recognition. In the Bengali writing system, there are nearly 285 such ligatures denoting consonant clusters. Although there exist a few visual formulas to construct some of these ligatures, many of them have to be learned by rote. Recently, in

10960-482: 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. Historical Islamic kingdoms that existed in Bengal employed several clever technologies in numerous areas such as architecture, agriculture, civil engineering, water management, etc. The creation of canals and reservoirs was a common practice for

11097-438: 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 traveler Ibn Battuta 's diary

11234-455: The country. In India, Bengali is one of the 23 official languages . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal , Tripura and in Barak Valley of Assam . Bengali has been a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. In Pakistan , Bengali is a recognised secondary language in the city of Karachi mainly spoken by stranded Bengalis of Pakistan . The Department of Bengali in

11371-535: 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

11508-587: The development of Dobhashi . Bengali acquired prominence, over Persian, in the court of the Sultans of Bengal with the ascent of Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah . Subsequent Muslim rulers actively promoted the literary development of Bengali, allowing it to become the most spoken vernacular language in the Sultanate. Bengali adopted many words from Arabic and Persian , which was a manifestation of Islamic culture on

11645-621: The east to Meherpur in the west. The 14th-century court scholar of Bengal, Nur Qutb Alam , composed Bengali poetry using the Persian alphabet . After the Partition of India in the 20th century, the Pakistani government attempted to institute the Perso-Arabic script as the standard for Bengali in East Pakistan ; this was met with resistance and contributed to the Bengali language movement. In

11782-549: The eastern subcontinent, Purbi Apabhraṃśa or Abahatta (lit. 'meaningless sounds'), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups, the Bengali–Assamese languages , the Bihari languages , and the Odia language . The language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects in this period. For example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around

11919-500: The emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognised 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the language movement. Although Sanskrit has been spoken by Hindu Brahmins in Bengal since the 3rd century BC, the local Buddhist population spoke varieties of the Prakrit . These varieties are generally referred to as "eastern Magadhi Prakrit ", as coined by linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji , as

12056-405: The fact that the English version relied heavily on the French edited version (and not the entire French or Arabic version) and that the editing of the text cut out passages of "no less historical import than the ones included." This review also is critical of the English version's use of vignette-style segments versus the style of Mas'udi, whose original work is not cut into small pieces but rather

12193-565: The fertile Ganges plain. The lead to greater concentrations of people in the area with more opportunities for Sufi missionaries to preach Islam. According to historian Richard M. Eaton, Islam became the religion of the plough in the Bengal delta . Islam's emergence in the region was intimately tied with agriculture. The delta was the most fertile region in the empire. Mughal development projects cleared forests and established thousands of Sufi-led villages, which became industrious farming and craftsmanship communities. The projects were most evident in

12330-466: The final ন in মন [m o n] or the medial ম in গামলা [ɡamla] ). A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent [ɔ] is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel allographs above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures . These allographs, called কার kar , are diacritical vowel forms and cannot stand on their own. For example,

12467-714: The government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared Bengali as an honorary official language in December 2002. In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali to be made an official language of the United Nations . Regional varieties in spoken Bengali constitute a dialect continuum . Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji grouped the dialects of Bengali language into four large clusters: Rarhi , Vangiya , Kamrupi and Varendri ; but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed. The south-western dialects ( Rarhi or Nadia dialect) form

12604-499: The graph মি [mi] represents the consonant [m] followed by the vowel [i] , where [i] is represented as the diacritical allograph ি (called ই-কার i-kar ) and is placed before the default consonant sign. Similarly, the graphs মা [ma] , মী [mi] , মু [mu] , মূ [mu] , মৃ [mri] , মে [me~mɛ] , মৈ [moj] , মো [mo] and মৌ [mow] represent the same consonant ম combined with seven other vowels and two diphthongs. In these consonant-vowel ligatures,

12741-412: The graphical form. However, since this change is not as widespread and is not being followed as uniformly in the rest of the Bengali printed literature, today's Bengali-learning children will possibly have to learn to recognise both the new "transparent" and the old "opaque" forms, which ultimately amounts to an increase in learning burden. Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the downstroke । daṛi –

12878-451: The imperial throne. Mughal Bengal became increasingly independent under the Nawabs of Bengal in the 18th century. The Bengali Muslim population emerged as a synthesis of Islamic and Bengali cultures. After the Partition of India in 1947, they comprised the demographic majority of Pakistan until the independence of East Pakistan (historic East Bengal ) as Bangladesh in 1971 . A Bengali

13015-483: The language as: While most writing is in Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB), spoken dialects exhibit a greater variety. People in southeastern West Bengal, including Kolkata, speak in SCB. Other dialects, with minor variations from Standard Colloquial, are used in other parts of West Bengal and western Bangladesh, such as the Midnapore dialect, characterised by some unique words and constructions. However,

13152-535: The language. Major texts of Middle Bengali (1400–1800) include Yusuf-Zulekha by Shah Muhammad Sagir and Srikrishna Kirtana by the Chandidas poets. Court support for Bengali culture and language waned when the Mughal Empire conquered Bengal in the late 16th and early 17th century. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the west-central dialect spoken in

13289-479: The languages became distinct. The spread of Islam in the Indian subcontinent can be a contested issue. 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

13426-399: The largely disaffected Buddhist East Bengal versus the largely Hindu regions of West Bengal. A few centuries later the agrarian reforms of the Mughal Empire accelerated conversion and population growth across Bangladesh by creating a system of farming villages centered around Sufi missions. The Mughals granted landless peasants land around these missions in order to accelerate development of

13563-434: 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. Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah was born as Jadu, the son of Hindu King Raja Ganesha . He later ruled most of Bengal as

13700-518: 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. 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

13837-476: The leadership of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan the promotion the English language among Muslims of India also influenced Bengali Muslim society. 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 . A precursor to

13974-428: The letter ত tô and the numeral ৩ "3" are distinguishable only by the presence or absence of the matra , as is the case between the consonant cluster ত্র trô and the independent vowel এ e , also the letter হ hô and Bengali Ôbogroho ঽ (~ô) and letter ও o and consonant cluster ত্ত ttô . The letter-forms also employ the concepts of letter-width and letter-height (the vertical space between

14111-668: The local ruler and population to embrace Islam. 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

14248-587: 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

14385-617: 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. Arakan forcefully deported thousands of Bengali Muslims and Hindus during its invasions and collusion with the Portuguese. Deportees included the poet Alaol . As a result, the Bengali minority in Arakan developed a distinct Arakanese identity and became influential elites in Arakanese society. Arakanese Muslims, known today as Rohingya people , trace their ancestry to

14522-546: 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

14659-585: The neighbouring states of Odisha , Bihar , and Jharkhand , and sizeable minorities of Bengali speakers reside in Indian cities outside Bengal, including Delhi , Mumbai , Thane , Varanasi , and Vrindavan . There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in the Middle East , the United States , Singapore , Malaysia , Australia , Canada , the United Kingdom , and Italy . The 3rd article of

14796-514: The parliament of Bangladesh and the legislative assembly of West Bengal proposed that Bengali be made an official UN language. As of January 2023, no further action has been yet taken on this matter. However, in 2022, the UN did adopt Bangla as an unofficial language, after a resolution tabled by India. In 2024, the government of India conferred Bengali with the status of classical language . Approximate distribution of native Bengali speakers (assuming

14933-584: 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 The factors facilitating conversion to Islam from Buddhism, Hinduism and indigenous religions, again

15070-605: The period of Bengali influence in Arakan. The Bengal Sultanate also counted Tripura as a vassal state. Bengal restored the throne of Tripura by helping Ratna Manikya I to assume the throne. 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

15207-469: 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

15344-684: The proclamation "conqueror of Kamrupa, Kamata, Jajnagar and Orissa". The Pratapgarh Kingdom came under Bengali suzerainty . The island 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 . Bengali ships dominated

15481-713: 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. A few decades following the Sena Conquest of the region, the Sena, themselves, were conquered by Bakhtiyar Khalji opening up

15618-409: 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

15755-574: The region to a greater influx of Sufi missionaries. This hypothesis would explain why the Islam spread faster in East Bengal than West Bengal. Essentially, East Bengal had a large Buddhist population compared to West Bengal. The conquest of the area by Hindu kingdoms lead to the subjugation of Buddhists in the region. With the Turkic conquest, came the arrival of Sufi missionaries who were more successful at converting

15892-526: 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 . After 1870, Muslims began a seeking British-style education in increasingly larger numbers. Under

16029-543: The region. Bengali Islamic architecture emerged as a synthesis of Bengali, Persian, Byzantine, and Mughal elements. Bengali language Bengali , also known by its endonym Bangla ( বাংলা , Bāṅlā , [ˈbaŋla] ), is a classical Indo-Aryan language from the Indo-European language family native to the Bengal region of South Asia. With over 237 million native speakers and another 41 million as second language speakers as of 2024, Bengali

16166-475: The reign of al-Muti ( r.  946–974 ). Some notable sections include several stories involving the various Caliphs and their interactions with commoners like "Mahdi and the Bedouin" (37) in which the Caliph al-Mahdi ( r.  775–785 ) is served a humble meal by a passing Bedouin who in turn is rewarded with a large monetary reward. A large portion of the English text is dedicated to stories involving

16303-427: The so-called "inherent" vowel [ɔ] is first expunged from the consonant before adding the vowel, but this intermediate expulsion of the inherent vowel is not indicated in any visual manner on the basic consonant sign ম [mɔ] . The vowel graphemes in Bengali can take two forms: the independent form found in the basic inventory of the script and the dependent, abridged, allograph form (as discussed above). To represent

16440-488: The sultanate. New methods of irrigation were pioneered by the Sufis. Bengali mosque architecture featured terracotta, stone, wood and bamboo, with curved roofs, corner towers and multiple domes. During the Bengal Sultanate, a distinct regional style flourished which featured no minarets, but had richly designed mihrabs and minbars as niches. Islamic Bengal had a long history of textile weaving, including export of muslin during

16577-536: The superposed chôndrôbindu (ঁ) , denoting a suprasegmental for nasalisation of vowels (as in চাঁদ [tʃãd] "moon"), the postposed ônusbar (ং) indicating the velar nasal [ŋ] (as in বাংলা [baŋla] "Bengali") and the postposed bisôrgô (ঃ) indicating the voiceless glottal fricative [h] (as in উঃ! [uh] "ouch!") or the gemination of the following consonant (as in দুঃখ [dukʰːɔ] "sorrow"). The Bengali consonant clusters ( যুক্তব্যঞ্জন juktôbênjôn ) are usually realised as ligatures, where

16714-473: The text involves the civil war between Caliph al-Amin ( r.  809–813 ) at Baghdad and his half-brother al-Ma'mun ( r.  813–833 ), who defeated Amin and became Caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate. The text spends a considerable number of pages relaying several lengthy poems about the horrors of the siege of Baghdad (812–813) . While the French version has been a key historical text for over

16851-635: The third place, according to the 2011 census of India . Bengali has developed over more than 1,400 years. Bengali literature , with its millennium-old literary history, was extensively developed during the Bengali Renaissance and is one of the most prolific and diverse literary traditions in Asia. The Bengali language movement from 1948 to 1956 demanding that Bengali be an official language of Pakistan fostered Bengali nationalism in East Bengal leading to

16988-484: The visible matra and an invisible baseline). There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence (sorting order of graphemes to be used in dictionaries, indices, computer sorting programs, etc.) of Bengali graphemes. Experts in both Bangladesh and India are currently working towards a common solution for this problem. Throughout history, there have been instances of the Bengali language being written in different scripts, though these employments were never popular on

17125-435: The vocabulary may differ according to the speaker's religion: Muslims are more likely to use words of Persian and Arabic origin, along with more words naturally derived from Sanskrit ( tadbhava ), whereas Hindus are more likely to use tatsama (words directly borrowed from Sanskrit). For example: The phonemic inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 nasalised vowels . The inventory

17262-741: The world, helping design the world's tallest buildings. Another Bengali Muslim German-American, Jawed Karim , was the co-founder of YouTube. In 2016, the modernist Bait-ur-Rouf Mosque, inspired by the Bengal Sultanate-style of buildings, won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture . Bengali Muslims constitute the world's second-largest Muslim ethnicity (after the Arab world) and the largest Muslim community in South Asia. An estimated 152   million Bengali Muslims live in Bangladesh as of 2021, where Islam

17399-645: 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

17536-401: 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

17673-411: Was a prominent Bengali Muslim artist in the 18th century during the colonial period. His works were inspired by the style of Mughal courts. An indigenous style of Islamic architecture flourished in Bengal during the medieval Sultanate period. Traditional Bengali Islamic architecture includes elements like brick, floral terracotta and stone craftsmanship. Mosques with multiple domes are proliferated in

17810-435: Was a prominent painter. His famine sketches of the 1940s are his most remarkable works of all time. The unique trend of rickshaw art started from major cities of Bangladesh like Rajshahi and Dhaka and took its own style in each district. Chittagong being a more pious city than Dhaka mostly had floral or scenery art whereas Cumilla has plain rickshaws with beautiful blue and green hoods, on which are sewn an appliqué of

17947-514: 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

18084-580: 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 galvanized 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

18221-991: 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

18358-535: Was published in 1841 by Aloys Sprenger , which includes a full translation of the first volume and extensive footnotes. Historian Hugh N. Kennedy calls the book "Probably the best introduction to the Arabic historical tradition for the non-specialist." Written in the "new style" of historical writing of al-Dinawari and al-Ya'qubi , Meadows of Gold is composed in a format that contains both historically documented facts , hadiths or sayings from reliable sources and stories, anecdotes , poetry and jokes that

18495-596: 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. 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

18632-409: 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 enrollment increased by 20%. New subjects were introduced into

18769-628: Was the most volatile neighbor 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

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