Today, Dhaka, quite apart from any other adjectives that may be applied to it, might well be described as thriving, in its own way. It is also heading, it is said, to be the largest metropolis in the world. Not, however, for the first time!
One hundred years before the East India Company secured their own hold on the revenues of the provinces of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, territories that were all ruled from Mughal Dhaka, the city was already taking shape as the flourishing centre of wealth and trade it unquestionably was, and would remain for centuries. Politically, economically, and administratively, its light was dimmed, somewhat, after the middle of the 18th century, until independence in 1971.
The British, of course, with an already well established administrative headquarters on the Hugli, at Calcutta, having taken firm control of revenue collection rights in the region, rapidly shifted the centre of attention from Dhaka, to where they were already “dug in”.
Their Mughal predecessors, however, even from their arrival in the mid 16th century seem to have been unable to decide quite where their focus of administration of the region should lie, until the arrival of Mir Jumla in 1660. Arriving, in hot pursuit of the fleeing Shah Suja, the defeated brother of Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal Emperor, he adopted Dhaka as his centre of operations.
Thomas Bowrey, the late 17th century mariner who published his journal as Geographical Account of Countries Around the Bay of Bengal, probably in the late 1680s, gives an interesting personal view of the city in the 1670s; we are also fortunate to have a number of other contemporary journals to flesh out some illumination of the city as it became such a focus for trade, politics, and administration.
Bowrey writes: “The City of Dhaka is a very large, spacious one, but stands on low, marshy, swampy ground, and the water of that ground is very brackish, which is the only inconvenience. It has, however, some very fine conveniences that compensate, having a very fine and large river that runs close by the city walls, navigable by ships of 500 or 600 tonnes burden.
“The water of the river, being an arm of the Ganges, is extraordinarily good, but is some distance for fetching and carrying for some residents of the city, the city being not less than 40 English miles in circumference.
“It is an admirable city for its greatness, for its magnificent buildings, and the multitude of its inhabitants.”
Since he comments on the size of the city, and its great population, we may remind ourselves that, as the “capital” of the wealthiest provinces of the richest Empire in the world at the time, it may well, in fact, have been the world’s largest and most densely populated city of its time!
He continued: “A very great and potent, permanent, and paid army is based here, in a constant state of readiness. Also, many large, strong, and stately elephants, trained for battle, which are kept close to the palace.”
It is interesting to note that Bowrey, despite his apparent use of the present tense, was, perhaps, writing a decade or so after Mir Jumla’s arrival. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, however, a French jeweller, who travelled extensively in the region between 1630 and 1668, and no doubt formed a rather earlier view, has a somewhat different take on the city.
“Dhaka is a great town, that extends itself only in length, of about two leagues (about six miles), on the banks of the Ganges, where everyone wants to live.
“ ... there is but one continued row of houses separated from one another; these are inhabited, for the most part, by carpenters that build galleys and other small vessels. These houses are, in fact, no more than poor huts of bamboo, daubed over with a thick layer of mud.
“Even the Governor’s Palace is a place enclosed within high walls, in the middle of which is a pitiful house, built of wood. He generally lodges in tents, which he orders [to be] set up in a court of enclosure.”
It seems his impression may well have been formed after the construction of the wall of Lalbagh Fort, but before the construction of other buildings, which might time his impression at about 1660. Which suggests that the quarter century of, mostly, Shaista Khan’s rule in Dhaka, from 1663 until, eventually, 1688, was, indeed, one of extraordinary development of the city.
Tavernier then comments upon a new phenomenon in the rapidly developing city, the advent of European trading businesses. “The Dutch, finding storage of their goods unsafe, have built themselves a very attractive house, and the English, another, which is also reasonably appealing. The Church of the Austin Friars is made of brick, and is a very pretty pile.”
Another, more or less contemporary account, reads:
“ … Dhaka lies under the Tropic of Cancer, on the broadest, easternmost branch of the Ganges. The city is the largest in Bengal, and it manufactures cotton and silk, from the best, to the cheapest.”
Bowrey, too, writes of the Dutch and English “factories” (literally, the residence of factors). “The English and Dutch each have a factory in Dhaka; their investment, however, is small, very inconsequential in value, but of great consequence in other ways, for here they are close to the Prince and the Court, under whom all such factories are chartered, and they are easily able to protest about any mistreatment in the area.”
Writing, about two centuries later, yet another English writer, James “Surgeon” Taylor, describes Dhaka thus: “A considerable number of public buildings, such as mosques and alms houses were constructed by Shaista Khan (who became Viceroy in 1663, and, with a two year break, from 1677 to 79, continued to be so until his death in 1688). Judging from the prevalence of the style of these buildings, a style referred to as ‘Shaista Khany,’ a great number of the large, brick-built houses of the town appear to have been erected in his time.”
However, this writer is also the source of the belief that: “The Palace of the Lalbagh was commenced in 1678 by Sultan Mohammed Azim, the third son of Emperor Aurangzeb, (during his brief stay as Viceroy, between the two lengthy periods under Shaista Khan), and was left in an unfinished state to his successor, Shaista Khan, who also appears never to have completed the structure.”
The sum of all these journals tells us, as eye witnesses, or as those with informants who had lived through the rapid development of this great and affluent centre of trade, commerce, and politics, is that the city, described by Robert Lindsay, the Collector of Sylhet, in his recollections of Dhaka in the last two decades of the 18th century, and of Bishop Heber of Calcutta, a visitor in the 1820s, as one full of decaying grandeur, was, indeed, once, a truly great and proud city.
The rapidly disappearing palaces of Old Dhaka reflect, perhaps, something of a mid to late 19th century revival, but even before Heber’s graphic descriptions of decay, the art of D’Oyly also pictures, around the same time as Lindsay, such as the Lalbagh Fort gate that seems, even today, to have declined little beyond his time of painting; and 1950s photography shows that the great “Colombo Shahib” Mausoleum in the Narinda Cemetery has declined more disastrously in the last 50 years than it had in the previous century and a half when it was painted by Zoffany, the British Royal Court artist in the 1790s.
How appropriate, today, seem the words of the famous Mediaeval reminder to Papal candidates: “Sic transit Gloria mundi!” And yet ... there are, of course, still traces of the Dhaka before “the fall”, the migration to Calcutta, when, we are told, within a decade, through starvation, and the migration, the population of what, in the late 17th century was probably the world’s most affluent and populated city, declined to 25% of its previous population. And, once again, what once declined is now being seen to rise again. Different times, different shape, but once again a socially, economically, and politically flourishing metropolis.
