1. See R. K. Mukerjee, The Changing Face of Bengal: A Study of Riverine Economy (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1938), 3–10; S. C. Majumdar, Rivers of the Bengal Delta (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1942), 65–72; W. H. Arden Wood, “Rivers and Man in the Indus-Ganges Alluvial Plain,” Scottish Geographical Magazine 40, no. 1 (1924): 9–10; C. Strickland, Deltaic Formation, with Special Reference to the Hydrographic Processes of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra (Calcutta: Longmans, Green, 1940), 104; Kanangopal Bagchi, The Ganges Delta (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1944), 33. Geographers and geologists have not agreed on the fundamental cause of Bengal’s riverine dynamics. Whereas geographers generally see sedimentation as the driving force behind riverine movement, geologists have pointed to tectonic activity that has produced a torsion in the crust of East Bengal. According to this view, torsion caused the uplift of the Barind in northern Bengal and the subsidence of the Sylhet Basin, which in turn produced a major fault line passing south by southeast from eastern Rangpur to eastern Barisal, into which Bengal’s major rivers have tended to gravitate. See J. Fergusson, “Delta of the Ganges,” Journal of the Geological Society of London 19 (1863): 321–54; F. C. Hirst, Report on the Nadia Rivers, 1915 (Calcutta, 1916); and James P. Morgan and William G. McIntire, “Quaternary Geology of the Bengal Basin, East Pakistan and India,” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 70 (March 1959): 319–42.

2. Bagchi, Ganges Delta, 58. See also N. D. Bhattacharya, “Changing Course of the Padma and Human Settlements,” National Geographic Journal of India 24, nos. 1 and 2 (March-June 1978): 63–65.

3. Mukerjee, Changing Face, 137.

4. Federici, “Extracts,” 113. As he wrote, “the River is very shallow, and little water.”

5. Abu’l-fazl ‘Allami, Akbar-nāma, trans., 3: 153; text, 3: 109.

6. Jean Baptice Tavernier, Travels in India, ed. V. Ball (London: Macmillan, 1889; reprint, Lahore: Al-Biruni, 1976), 1: 125.

7. In the British period the movement of prosperity and population from northwest to southeast was observed to occur even within districts. Thus between 1881 and 1911 the population of northern Faridpur increased by 7 percent while that of southeastern Faridpur increased by 50 percent. “The stagnation of the north,” it was noted in the Faridpur settlement report, “is clearly due to the drying up of the rivers and streams which has made the soil less fertile, the transport of produce more difficult and the climate more unhealthy. During the cold weather the rivers become a chain of dirty pools; there are few tanks and no good drinking water. Epidemics of cholera are very frequent and other diseases take toll of the population; malaria is constant everywhere and the people generally have a very low degree of vitality.” J. C. Jack, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the Faridpur District, 1904 to 1914 (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1916), 7.

8. Subrahmanyam, “Notes,” 268.

9. Federici, “Extracts,” 137.

10. Ibid., 185.

11. François Pyrard, The Voyage of François Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas and Brazil, ed. and trans. Albert Gray (Hakluyt Society, 1st ser., nos. 76, 77, 80, 1887–90; reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, n.d.), 2: 327.

12. S. Arasaratnam, “The Rice Trade in Eastern India, 1650–1740,” Modern Asian Studies 22, no. 3 (1988): 531–49.

13. Manrique, Travels, 1: 56. In 1665 François Bernier noted that Bengal “produces rice in such abundance that it supplies not only the neighboring but remote states. It is carried up the Ganges as far as Patna, and exported by sea to Maslipatam and many other ports on the coast of Koromandel. It is also sent to foreign kingdoms, principally to the island of Ceylon and the Maldives.” Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 1656–68, trans. Archibald Constable, 2d ed. (New Delhi: S. Chand & Co., 1968), 437.

14. Manrique, Travels, 1: 54.

15. Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 224–29.

16. Orme, Military Transactions, 2: 4.

17. For the geographical distribution of Bengal’s textile indutry, see the maps in K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 248; and Irfan Habib, An Atlas of the Mughal Empire (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), map 11B.

18. Ralph Fitch, “The Voyage of Master Ralph Fitch Merchant of London to Ormus, and so to Goa in the East India, to Cambaia, Ganges, Bengala,” in Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625; Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905), 10: 184.

19. Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, 2d ed., ed. William Crooke (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), 290.

20. As Manrique noted in 1640, “Most of the cloth is made of cotton and manufactured with a delicacy and propriety not met with elsewhere. The finest and richest muslins are produced in this country, from 50 to 60 yards long and 7 to 8 handbreadths wide, with borders of gold and silver or coloured silks. So fine, indeed, are these muslins that merchants place them in hollow bamboos, about two spans long, and thus secured, carry them throughout Carazane [Khurasan], Persia, Turkey, and many other countries.” Manrique, Travels, 1: 56–57.

21. In 1655, for example, Indian merchants from Agra bought up six thousand bales at Cossimbazar for export to the imperial court, a quantity twice the size of the Dutch purchase two years later. Generale missiven, 2: 795; 3:101.

22. See pp. 96–97.

23. See Subrahmanyam, “Notes,” 265–89.

24. Sushil Chaudhury, Trade and Commercial Organization in Bengal, 1650–1720 (Calcutta: Firma K. L.M., 1975), 178–79. In 1652 Dutch East India Company officials wrote that raw silk was so abundant in Bengal that in Cossimbazar alone they could invest ten tons of gold in that commodity, noting that local merchants would accept only silver or gold for such purchases. Generale missiven, 2: 622.

25. Prakash, Dutch East India Company, 75. Raw silk and cotton textiles, followed by saltpetre and opium, were the principal commodities exported from Bengal by the Dutch. Silk comprised nearly 40 percent of Dutch exports in 1675–76, and 29 percent between 1701 and 1703. In the same periods Bengali textiles comprised 22 and 54 percent respectively. Ibid., 72.

26. Sushil Chaudhury, “The Asian Merchants and Companies in Bengal’s Export Trade, circa mid-Eighteenth Century” (paper presented at the International Conference on “Merchants, Companies, and Trade” held at the Maison des Sciences de l’homme, Paris, May 30-June 2, 1990). See also Sushil Chaudhury, Pre-Modern Industries and Maritime Trade in South Asia: Bengal in the First Half of theEighteenth Century, chs. 7 and 8 (forthcoming).

27. Subrahmanyam, “Notes,” 269.

28. Ibid., 279. Between 1626 and 1635 imperial mints in Bengal (including Patna) turned out an estimated annual average of 85.76 metric tons of silver coinage, a figure surpassing the output of the imperial mints of Gujarat, of the Northwest (Lahore, Multan, Thatta, Kabul, Qandahar), and of the central provinces. Shireen Moosvi, The Economy of the Mughal Empire, c. 1595: A Statistical Study (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), 357–61. As this was a period after the decline of Portuguese commerce in Bengal, and before the advent of the Dutch or English there, a good part of this silver probably accompanied the influx of Mughal men and arms into the new frontier province.

29. Prakash, Dutch East India Company, 249.

30. Om Prakash, “Bullion for Goods: International Trade and the Economy of Early Eighteenth Century Bengal,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 13, no. 2 (April-June 1976): 162–63.

31. Chaudhury, Trade and Commercial Organization, 100–125.

32. “Till of late years,” wrote the Englishman Luke Scrafton in 1760, “inconceivable numbers of merchants from all parts of Asia in general, as well as from the rest of Hindostan in particular, sometimes in bodies of many thousands at a time, were used annually to resort to Bengal with little else than ready money or bills to purchase the produce of these provinces.” Scrafton, Reflections on the Government of Indostan (London, 1760), 20. Cited in Sushil Chaudhury, “The Asian Merchants and Companies in Bengal’s Export Trade,” 18.

33. See Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1652 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934; reprint, New York: Octagon Books, 1965), 283–306.

34. Aziza Hasan, “The Silver Currency Output of the Mughal Empire and Prices in India during the 16th and 17th Centuries,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 6, no. 1 (March 1969): 85–116.

35. In Gujarat during the first third of the seventeenth century, the price of both indigo and sugar rose with the money supply, as did that of grain in North India between 1595 and 1669. Ibid., 104–10.

36. According to Dutch records, between 1657 and 1713, a period that saw a dramatic influx of silver in Bengal, the prices of basic commodities such as rice, wheat, clarified butter, and sugar did show fluctuations, but no consistent pattern of inflation. For example, in 1658, the earliest date for which there are data, a hundred maunds of rice cost Rs. 49, whereas in 1717 the same amount cost Rs. 48. Prakash, Dutch East India Company, 251–53.

37. In 1659, provincial land revenue demand (jama‘) in round figures stood at Rs. 10.3 million, but from 1700 on this figure was gradually increased each year, reaching Rs. 14.2 million in 1722. Of this, Rs. 10.9 million was intended for the central treasury in Delhi (khāliṣa), and Rs. 3.3 million for maintenance of local officials in the province (jāgīr). See Dastūr-i ‘amal-i ‘ālamgīrī (British Library MS., Add. 6599), fols. 120a–121a; Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, dated 28 July, 1812, ed. Walter K. Firminger (Calcutta: R. Cambray & Co., 1917), 2: 189–91. The annual enhancements made between 1700 and 1721 were the work of the provincial governor Murshid Quli Khan and are found in Appendix No. 6 to John Shore’s “Minute on the Rights and Privileges of Zamindars” (West Bengal Government Archives, Calcutta, Board of Revenue Proceedings for April 2, 1788, vol. 127), 539–40. Cited in Philip B. Calkins, “Revenue Administration and the Formation of a Regionally Oriented Ruling Group in Bengal, 1700–1740” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1972), 146.

38. The central government evidently failed to receive even the Rs. 10.3 million demanded in the 1659 land revenue revision. Around 1687 the collected land revenue (ḥāṣil) sent to Delhi amounted to Rs. 8.6 million. Between 1712 and 1727, Delhi received from Bengal an annual average of Rs. 8.9 million in land revenue, which between 1728 and 1739 rose somewhat to Rs. 9.4 million. These figures were calculated by Philip Calkins on the basis of raw data in “Comparative Tables of the Revenue of Bengal,” British Library, London, Add. MS. 6586, ff. 46b-48a. See Calkins, “Revenue Administration,” 162. The reason for the gap between the khāliṣa demand and the figure actually sent to Delhi was hinted at by M. de Thevenot, a Frenchman who traveled through India in 1666 and meticulously recorded what he heard. “My Indian,” he wrote in that year, “reckons the yearly Revenue of the Mogul [in Bengal] to amount to Ten millions; but I learnt from other hands, that it hardly makes Nine, though it be far richer than other Provinces that yield him more: The reason given for that, is, that it lies in the extremity of his Empire, and is Inhabited by a capricious sort of People, who must be gently used, because of the Neighbourhood of Kings that are enemies.” Surendranath Sen, ed., Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri (New Delhi: National Archives of India, 1949), 97.

39. See Jadunath Sarkar, ed., History of Bengal, 413.

40. Mukundaram, Kavikaṅkaṇa Caṇḍī, 290, 295–96, 354–55. See also Bhattacharya, “La Déesse,” 33.

41. Wang Ta-yüan, Tao i chih lio (“Description of the Barbarians of the Isles”), in W. W. Rockhill, “Notes on the Relations,” T’oung Pao 16, pt. 2, section 4 (1915): 436.

42. Interview with Muhammad Sharif Hussain, secretary, Jessore Public Library, Kharki Post, District Jessore, May 19, 1982.

43. Interview with Muhammad Badrur Huda, additional subdivisional officer, Revenue, Noakhali District Collectorate, June 17, 1982.

44. Mohendra Nath Karan, Hijli Masnad-i Ala, 621, cited in Sultan Jahan Ahmad, “Muslim Society in Midnapur—a Social Study of a Bengal District (1800 A.D.–1919 A.D.)” (Ph.D. diss., Jadavpur University, Calcutta, 1982), 58. The story contains elements of a classical Indian rite of Hindu kingship, the “horse sacrifice” (asvamedha), according to which a raja asserted his claims to territorial sovereignty over lands traversed by a horse set loose to roam at will.

45. L. S.S. O’Malley, Eastern Bengal District Gazetteers, Khulna (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1908), 193–94. A class of professional woodcutters “proceed in boats to certain localities in the forests called gais, each of which is presided over by a faqīr, who is supposed to possess the occult power of charming away tigers and who has undoubtedly some knowledge of woodcraft. Here the wood-cutters work six days in each week, for one day of the week (but no particular day) is set apart for the worship of the sylvan deity presiding over that particular forest.”

46. Wise, “Muhammadans of Eastern Bengal,” 40.

47. Francis Buchanan, A Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Description of the Districts, or Zila, of Dinajpur (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1833), 93.

48. The Englishman John Marshall, traveling from Orissa to Hooghly, recorded the following on February 14, 1670: “Tis reported That every Thursday at night a Tyger comes out and Salams to a Fuckeers [faqīr’s] Tomb there [in Ramchandpur, near Balasore], and when I was there on thursday at night, it was both heard and seene.” Shafaat Ahmad Khan, ed., John Marshall in India: Notes and Observations in Bengal, 1668–1672 (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), 62.

49. Wise, “Muhammadans of Eastern Bengal,” 40.

50. Shamsud-Din Ahmed, ed. and trans., Inscriptions, 4: 66.

51. Syed Murtaza Ali, Saints of East Pakistan (Dacca: Oxford University Press, 1971), 41.

52. Westland, Report, 20–21.

53. O’Malley, Khulna District Gazetteer, 194.

54. Westland, Report, 15; Johana E. van Lohuizen de Leeuw, “The Early Muslim Monuments at Bagerhat,” in The Islamic Heritage of Bengal, ed. George Michell (Paris: UNESCO, 1984), 169.

55. Some of these roads were said to have been so well engineered that they never required repair. The best of these, a road running along the Bhairab River at Bagerhat, was made of bricks about five or six inches square and less than two inches thick, laid on edge to form a road about ten feet across, raised on a slightly elevated embankment. Westland, Report, 11–12, 19.

56. The mosque’s tapering walls, not found in any other monument in Bengal, are reminiscent of the Tughluq style of architecture and point to North India as Khan Jahan’s likely place of origin. Van Lohuizen de Leeuw, “Early Muslim Monuments,” 177.

57. Webster, Eastern Bengal and Assam District Gazetteers: Noakhali, 100–101.

58. The information on Pir ‘Umar and his sons is found in British revenue records of the late eighteenth century, cited in W. H. Thompson, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of Noakhali, 1914–1919 (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1919), 24, 60–61.

59. Asutosh Bhattacharyya, “The Tiger-Cult and Its Literature in Lower Bengal,” Man in India 27, no. 1 (March 1947): 49–50.

60. The work is based on two manuscripts now lost: the Rauẓat al-ṣāliḥīn, said to have been composed in the reign of Aurangzeb (1658–1707), and an account by Mu‘in al-Din, a servant of Shah Jalal’s shrine, written during the governorship of Murshid Quli Khan (1713–27).

61. The relocation of Shah Jalal’s original home from Central Asia to Arabia seems to reflect the efforts of later Muslim reformers to Arabize the identity of the Bengali Muslim population generally, and especially the delta’s Muslim saints and heroes. See Rafiuddin Ahmed, Bengal Muslims, 106–13.

62. Maulvi Muhammad Nasir al-Din Haidar, Suhail-i Yaman, or Tārīkh-i Jalālī (Persian MS., comp. 1277 A.H. [1860–61 A.D.], Muslim Sahitya Samsad, Sylhet), 4–27. An English summary of this is found in J. Wise, “Note on Shah Jalal, the Patron Saint of Silhat,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 42, no. 3 (1873), 278–80.

63. John P. Thorp, “Masters of Earth: Conceptions of ‘Power’ among Muslims of Rural Bangaldesh” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1978), 63–64. The difference between the oral tradition and the account of the Suhail-i Yaman is that the villagers of Pabna identified Shah Jalal’s teacher as the Prophet Muhammad, and not as a Sufi master. The villagers also omitted any reference to Shah Jalal having defeated a Hindu raja in combat.

64. The poem and the Chandi cult have been analyzed by Bhattacharya, “La Déesse,” 17–53. For the text, see Mukundaram, Kavikaṅkaṇa Caṇḍī, 271–361. See also Somnath Mukhopadhyay, Candi in Art and Iconography (Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan, 1984).

65. Mukundaram, Kavikaṅkaṇa Caṇḍī, 299–300.

66. It is possible that this Zafar Mian represents a hazy memory of Zafar Khan, the historical pioneer who in 1298 patronized the construction of a mosque and madrasa at Tribeni, not distant from Mukundaram’s home in Burdwan. See Shamsud-Din Ahmed, ed. and trans., Inscriptions, 18–21.

67. Sukumar Sen, ed. and trans., Sekasubhodaya of Halayudha Misra (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1963), ix-xi. A manuscript of this text was discovered in the late nineteenth century at the Bais Hazari mosque in Pandua. There it served a magical function, being taken out from time to time and read in order to avert public evil.

68. Ibid., iii. As the text proclaims, “Whoever hears the narrative of the sheikh or makes (others) hear his auspicious advent, no harm comes to him and his prosperity increases.” Ibid., 160.

69. Ibid., 160.

70. Ibid., 179.

71. But the text gives A.H. 604, or A.D. 1207–8, as the date of his arrival, which makes it four years after the Turkish conquest. Ibid., 255.

72. Ibid., 179.

73. Ibid., 135.

74. Ibid., 136–37.

75. Ibid., 194.

76. Ibid., 142–43, 151.

77. Ibid., 217.

78. Ibid., 218, 220.

79. Ibid., 220, 222–24. The estate of Jalal al-Din Tabrizi is still known as “Bais Hazari,” or “Twenty-two Thousand,” and is still held by a mutawallī, or caretaker, for the benefit of faqīrs and the poor. ‘Abid ‘Ali Khan, Memoirs of Gaur and Pandua, ed. H. E. Stapleton (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat, 1931), 99.

80. Sen, Sekasubhodaya, 224, 225.

81. J. C. Jack, Final Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the Bakarganj District, 1900–1908 (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1915), 45.

82. Ibid., 17; H. Beveridge, The District of Bakarganj: Its History and Statistics (London: Trubner, 1876), 229–30, 242. Hindu colonizers continued to settle northern Bakarganj in Mughal times. “The Pals, Dasses and the Chandras are the owners,” we read in a 1906 survey of a village in Swarupkata Thana. “They came down to settle here on receiving farming leases from the then zamindars of Nayerkaleri some 220 years ago [i.e., ca. 1686].” “Mauza Notes,” Barisal District Collectorate Record Room, Swarupkati Thana, vol. 2, R. S. 2984.

83. François Bernier, who was in Bengal in 1665, wrote that renegade Portuguese under the protection of the Arakanese king “pursued no other trade than that of rapine and piracy. They scoured the neighboring seas in light galleys, called galleasses, entered the numerous arms and branches of the lower Ganges, ravaged the islands of Lower Bengal, and, often penetrated forty or fifty leagues up this country, surprised and carried away the entire population of villages on market days. The marauders made slaves of their unhappy captives, and burnt whatever could not be removed. It is owing to these repeated depredations that we see so many fine islands at the mouth of the Ganges, formerly thickly peopled, now entirely deserted by human beings, and become the desolate lairs of tigers and other wild beasts.” Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 175.

84. Bengal’s revenue administration shifted from Dhaka to Makhsusabad (later Murshidabad) when the chief provincial revenue officer (dīwān), the future Mur-shid Quli Khan, moved his residence there in 1704. The royal mint was also established there in that year. When Murshid Quli Khan was formally made governor in 1715–16 (he had been de facto governor since 1713), the provincial seat was officially transferred to Murshidabad. See Abdul Karim, Murshid Quli Khan and His Times (Dacca: Asiatic Society of Pakistan, 1963), 21–24, 63.

85. “The extensive sale transactions of the 17th and 18th centuries,” writes B. R. Grover, “established a large class of petty taaluqdars. A person who did not hold any Zamindari from the state but purchased Zamindari rights of a few villages or a village from the original Zamindar was known as a taaluqdar. Ordinarily, the sale or mortgage of the petty Zamindari shares would take place without the prior sanction of the Government[,] but in the case of transactions involving large Zamindari shares formal sanction of the Government was generally solicited and always granted by the state.” B. R. Grover, “Evolution of the Zamindari and Taluqdari System in Bengal (1576–1765 A.D.),” in Bangladesh Itihas Parishad: Third History Congress, Proceedings (Dacca: Bangladesh Itihas Parishad, 1973), 110.

86. Jack, Final Report Bakarganj District, 58.

87. Ibid., 59.

88. A village survey conducted in 1904 recorded that in Barisal Thana “the Chakravartys of Rahamatpur previously resided in the North Rahamatpur, laterly they came and settled in this mouza [village]. The Chakravartys of Rahamatpur are staunch Brahmans and in order to keep their social position high they brought several good kulin [i.e., pure] Brahmans from different parts and made them settle here.” “Mauza Notes,” Barisal District Collectorate Record Room, Barisal Thana, vol. 2, R. S. 2120.

89. Jack, Final Report Bakarganj District, 46.

90. “Mauza Notes,” Barisal District Collectorate Record Room, Barahanuddin Thana, R. S. 1846.

91. Ibid., Gaurnadi Thana, vol. 1, R. S. 696.

92. Ibid., vol. 2, R. S. 717.

93. “Mauza Notes,” Dhaka District Collectorate Record Room, Narayanganj Thana, vol. 3, No. 4534.

94. “Mauza Notes,” Barisal District Collectorate Record Room, Patuakhali Thana, vol. 2, R. S. 2855.

95. “Mauza Notes,” Dhaka District Collectorate Record Room, Narayanganj Thana, vol. 9, No. 4269.

96. Village records compiled in 1912 refer to a “renowned Moslem saint” named Shah Fateh Allah, described as “one of twelve Derwishes who came from the west and landed at Chittagong to spread the light of Islam” during the reign of Jahan-gir. From there he traveled to southern Dhaka District, where he and his son ‘Abd Allah, also a pīr, established themselves as renowned saints. Later—when and how we are not told—their descendants became the landlords (chaudhurī) of a village named “Fatulla” after its founder, and their descendants remained landlords there down to the twentieth century. Ibid., vol. 4, No. 1286.

97. “Mauza Notes,” Barisal District Collectorate Record Room, Jhalakati Thana, vol. 3, R. S. 2517.

98. Ibid., Swarupkati Thana, vol. 1, R. S. 177.

99. Ibid., Jhalakati Thana, vol. 3, R. S. 2471.

100. Ibid., Barisal Thana, vol. 1, R. S. 972.

101. Ibid., Jhalakati Thana, vol. 3, R. S. 2489.