Sonargaon first capital of Bengal

Sonargaon was the ending line for travelers making their way along the 2,500-kilometer Grand Trunk Road from Peshawar in the Hindu Kush. Sonargaon still has a few Mughal buildings, British colonial architecture, and the beautifully built colonial-style homes of Panam Nagar.

The remains of several Mughal monuments in this area include – the Panch Pir Mazar Shrine, Goaldi Mosque, Ibrahim’s and Abdul Hamid’s Mosque and the Sonakanda River Fort. And among the British colonial architecture conserved in Sonargaon includes the Ananda Mohan Poddar House and some other street-front palaces. Sonargaon was the ending line for travelers making their way along the 2,500-kilometer Grand Trunk Road from Peshawar in the Hindu Kush. Superbly built colonial-style residences of Panam Nagar, a prominent cloth trading center in the latter part of the 19th century, are under the protection of the Department of Archaeology.

Sonargaon, or more correctly Suvarnagrama, lies in a vast fertile region of lowland between the old course of Meghna, the Sitalakhya and the Dhaleswari rivers and about 30km north-eastern direction by Dhaka-Chittagong highway. The capital was established here by the first independent Sultan of Bengal, Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah (1338), and later Sultan Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah (1389 – 1409) continued his splendid court in Sonargaon.

The early history of this Hindu origin city is not yet definitely known. However, the first distinct reference to this city is found in the Tarikh-i-Firozshahi of Ziauddin Barni, which speaks about the friendly relation of Rai Danuj of Sonargaon with Ghiyasuddin Balban, the emperor of Delhi at the time.

Its position on the bank of the Meghna River gave it the first importance as an inland port-town, connecting ancient Bengal with the Middle East and the Far Eastern countries. It rose to be the political capital of East Bengal by the Muslim rulers between 1296 to 1608 A.D., and a mint was also established here.

Ibn Battuta visited Sonargaon around 1345 A.D, and here he embarked on a river vessel that took him directly to Java. The Chinese ambassadors to the court of Bengal Sultans came to this place in the early 15th century A.D. They wrote that Sonargaon was “an enclosed place with streets, tanks, bazars and a business centre for all kinds of goods,” and add that “all goods arc collected here and distributed.” Ralph Fitch visited Sonargaon in around 1588 A.D. He noticed, “Sonargaon is a town six leagues from Sripur, where the best and finest cloth made of cotton in all India”. He has also mentioned that the chief king Isa Khan’ Masnad-i-Ala and his brave son Musa Khan were among the most powerful ‘Bara-Bhuiyans’ of Bengal.

After establishing the Mughal capital at Dhaka in 1608, the political and economic importance of Sonargaon came to an end, and the city gradually dwindled into an unrecognisable village, especially after the collapse of its fine muslin industry.

Hindu cloth traders built their residential buildings following the blending of Indo-European architectural styles that reflected the socio-economic status and lifestyle of merchants and the elite class during the British colonial period. Originally, Panam street had 90 buildings, a mixture of single to three-storied buildings. The site contains 49 buildings on both sides of a road established in the late 19th century by local rich Hindu traders (Sahas and Poddars). Most of the buildings are fragile and in a vulnerable condition now. Bangladesh’s climate has made the buildings suffer from heavy rainfall, flood as the buildings are mostly made of bricks and wood. The picturesque stucco-decorated array of ruined houses of Panam Nagar has nothing to do with a very few surviving pre-Mughal and Mughal monuments scattered around this area. Yet, the superb architectures of Panam are regularly visited by many tourists on the wrongly assumpted that, are the ruins of the ancient capital city of Sonargaon. Panam City is now a protected Heritage site under the department of archaeology of Bangladesh.

The government has successfully regained the glorious original look of this heritage building through a huge restoration process together with the Korean Youngone group recently and is now open for public visitors.

The whole oblong structure of this two-storeyed building includes more than seventy rooms of different dimensions. The rooms are distributed around two open sky inner courts connected by corridors on the east and the west. The roof of this building has been erected with high durable brick chips and nothing else.

The main entrance of the building on the south-western corner is set into a 7.62-meter-wide wall which is extensively ornamented over the central semi-circular tall doorway with cut China pieces of clay tiles and stucco floral scrolls. The decoration of the archway particularly consists of geometric and floral patterns in mosaic and inlay work. The upper edge of the front archway is covered with mosaic patterns and free-standing floral scrolls of a bolder nature, enclosing an inscription in the centre. Two pairs of taller and two sets of smaller triple Corinthian columns support the springings of the archway on both sides of the entrance. The columns are ornamented with black and white alternating spiral bands of mosaic.

The western facade overlooking a large tank with a masonry landing is also richly illustrated with floral decorations in plaster. There are two life-size armed English horsemen in stucco right before the western wall.

The southern entrance leads on to the first two storeys inner courtyard of the building, which is surrounded by the rooms on the three sides. Originally, there used to be a platform for a Krishna temple on the eastern side of this courtyard, with a spacious verandah in front supported on four round Corinthian columns. Each of the columns are decorated with cut piece China mosaic. The semi-circular arches on the upper storey are relieved with floral scrolls. The three other wings, overlooking the court, have semi-circular arches in front and one flanked by Corinthian pilasters.

The second inner court is surrounded by corridors and a range of rooms on both floors. Semi-circular arches alternating with rectangular brick pillars are supporting the corridor of the ground floor, whilst two pairs of slender Corinthian pillars around a greater column on either side of the arches on the upper storey. Originally the inner wall face of the upper floor corridor was daintily decorated with mural paintings, representing floral motifs, but these have mostly disappeared. A single band of frieze bearing stucco foliate patterns relieve the cornice. A certain structure of a room on the upper floor also indicates an existence of a house temple. However, the temple name is unknown.

After the liberation war of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the Sonargaon Folk art museum was established (on the first right-hand side building from the western entrance) in the Panam Nagar in 1973. Later the museum was relocated to the Boro Sardarbari in 1983 to exhibit the collections from different periods of Sonargaon. While the department of archaeology decided to restore Boro Sardarbari, the museum gallery was again relocated to a newer modern building next to Boro Sardarbari.

Among the three mihrabs on the qibla wall, the central one is beautifully ornamented with carved floral and arabesque relief on the black basalt stone. The two flanking mihrabs are similarly decorated in brick and fine terracotta work. A single dome is crowning the mosque, and the dome is carried on four squinches at each corner and slightly sloped pendentives to make it a perfect circle, upon which the hemispherical dome rests.

Intensive terracotta panels with chain and bell motif have ornamented the solid surface in between the doors and the corner towers of the exterior walls. Which is commonly found in Gaur. The cornice on all four sides is gently curved. There are four ornamented mouldings in the cornice, and interspaces between the mouldings are also decorated with continuous floral relief. A combination of all these details portrays a highly decorated and rhythmic finishing of the building.

Ramadan visiting hours may vary depending on which season Ramadan falls in.

Some trips around Sonargaon: