Chittagong

• 1. Introduction

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  Chittagong sits where the Karnaphuli River bends toward the Bay of Bengal, wedged between coastal hills and open sea. The Portuguese explorer João de Barros once called it "the most famous and wealthy city of the Kingdom of Bengal." That was in the 16th century, when Portuguese ships were threading their way through a harbor that Greek and Roman cartographers had already been drawing for more than a thousand years. Today Chittagong is Bangladesh's second-largest city, home to more than 5.6 million people in the city area alone, and it handles 80 percent of the country's international trade. What kind of place earns that description across two and a half millennia? The answer involves Silk Road merchants, Mughal warships, a wartime airfield, a radio broadcast that started a nation, and a Nobel laureate born on its streets.

• 2. A Harbor Before History

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  Ptolemy placed Chittagong's harbor on his world map in the 2nd century, calling it one of the most impressive ports in the East. Stone Age tools and fossils found in the region suggest people have lived here since Neolithic times, and the city's recorded history reaches back to the 4th century BC. The ancient Bengali kingdoms of Samatata and Harikela held the region before the Chandra, Varman, and Deva dynasties each had their turn. The Chinese traveller Xuanzang, passing through in the 7th century, described the area as "a sleeping beauty rising from mist and water." Merchants from the Abbasid Caliphate arrived by the 9th century to establish a trading post. The port stood on the southern branch of the Silk Road, connecting it to Arabia, Persia, and eventually to China, Sumatra, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and East Africa. Medieval Chittagong dealt in pearls, silk, muslin, rice, bullion, horses, and gunpowder. It was also a major shipbuilding hub. Ibn Battuta visited in 1345 and found a bustling international port; the Venetian Niccolò de' Conti arrived around the same time. Chinese admiral Zheng He's treasure fleet anchored in Chittagong during imperial missions to the Sultanate of Bengal.

• 3. Conquest and Contested Sovereignty

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  Sultan Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah of Sonargaon took Chittagong in 1340, making it the principal maritime gateway to his sultanate. From the early 16th century onward, control of the city became a recurring prize. Dhaniya Manikya conquered it in 1513; Husain Shah's general Paragal Khan and crown prince Nasrat fought to reclaim it in 1516, advancing from their base on the Feni River. Nasrat renamed the city Fatehabad, City of Victory. A locality still called Nasirabad preserves his name. Portuguese ships from Goa and Malacca began frequenting the port in the 16th century. The Bengal Sultanate permitted a Portuguese settlement in 1528, making it the first European colonial enclave in Bengal. The cartaz system forced all ships in the area to buy naval trading licenses from the Portuguese. Slave trade and piracy flourished, and in 1615 the Portuguese Navy defeated a joint Dutch East India Company and Arakanese fleet near Chittagong's coast. The Arakanese Kingdom of Mrauk U held the city from the late 16th century until 1666, a span of roughly 70 years. Their rule ended when Mughal viceroy Shaista Khan launched a campaign that sent a 6,500-strong army into the jungle and deployed 288 naval ships to blockade the harbor. After three days of battle, the Arakanese surrendered. The Mughal victory had been partly triggered by the assassination of Mughal prince Shah Shuja in Arakan, which had strained relations beyond repair.

• 4. Under the Mughals and the British

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  Shaista Khan's son Umed Khan built the Anderkilla Shahi Jame Mosque in 1667, the year after the Mughal conquest. The mosque still stands as the only surviving part of a hilltop Mughal fort. Under Mughal rule the city was renamed Islamabad, connected to North India and Central Asia via the Grand Trunk Road, and absorbed into the prosperous Bengali economy that also included Orissa and Bihar. Shipbuilding surged; Ottoman Sultans had warships built in Chittagong during this period. The British East India Company twice tried and failed to seize the city by force. In 1685 an expedition under Admiral Nicholson found it too well defended. In early 1689 Captain Heath arrived with a fleet of ten or eleven ships and turned back for the same reason. Chittagong finally passed to the Company peacefully in 1793, when the Nawab of Bengal ceded the port. The First Anglo-Burmese War in 1823 threatened the British hold on it. In 1857, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th companies of the 34th Bengal Infantry Regiment revolted during the Indian rebellion, freeing prisoners from the city jail before being suppressed by the Sylhet Light Infantry. Railways arrived in 1865, and Chittagong became the main gateway to Eastern Bengal and Assam. In 1928 it was declared a "Major Port" of British India. The Chittagong armoury raid by Bengali revolutionaries in 1930 was a defining act in the anti-colonial history of the subcontinent. A Bollywood film, Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey, later dramatized that event with Abhishek Bachchan in the lead role.

• 5. War, Partition, and Independence

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  During World War II, Chittagong became a frontline city. The Imperial Japanese Army Air Force carried out air raids in April and May 1942 as part of the run-up to the aborted Japanese invasion of Bengal. After the Battle of Imphal, Allied fortunes improved; units of the United States Army Air Forces' 4th Combat Cargo Group were stationed at Chittagong Airfield in 1945. The war left heavy costs: the Great Famine of 1943 struck the city, refugees poured in, and 715 soldiers who died in the campaign are buried at the Chittagong War Cemetery, maintained to this day by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The Partition of British India in 1947 made Chittagong the chief port of East Pakistan. Within months the harbor was handling international shipping again. The Ispahani family shifted their corporate headquarters from Calcutta to Chittagong; the Africawala brothers set up the first steel re-rolling mills in the city in 1952, which eventually became BSRM. Britain's former flag carrier BOAC operated flights to the city. When the Bangladesh Liberation War began in 1971 under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, it was from Kalurghat Radio Station in Chittagong that the Bangladeshi Declaration of Independence was broadcast. Ziaur Rahman and M A Hannan announced it; A K Khan drafted the English version of Zia's broadcast. Mukti Bahini naval commandos sank several Pakistani warships during Operation Jackpot in August 1971. The Soviet Union cleared the harbor's mines for free after the war, a job that took nearly a year and claimed the life of Soviet marine Yuri V Redkin. Cargo tonnage at the port surpassed pre-war levels in 1973.

• 6. Economic Engine of Bangladesh

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  Chittagong accounts for 12 percent of Bangladesh's GDP, generates 40 percent of the country's industrial output, handles 80 percent of its international trade, and contributes 50 percent of its tax revenue. The Port of Chittagong handled US$60 billion in annual trade in 2011, ranking third in South Asia after Mumbai and Colombo. The Chittagong Stock Exchange, formed in 1995, has more than 700 listed companies and held a market capitalisation of US$32 billion in June 2015. The Chittagong Export Processing Zone was ranked by the magazine Foreign Direct Investment as one of the leading special economic zones in the world in 2010. In 2011-12 alone the city exported approximately US$4.5 billion in ready-made garments. Key industrial sectors include petroleum, steel, shipbuilding, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and jute. GlaxoSmithKline has had operations in Chittagong since 1967. International banks including HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Citibank operate there. The Chittagong Tea Auction, established in 1949, sets the price of Bangladeshi tea. By 2024 the S Alam Group had emerged as one of Bangladesh's most powerful conglomerates, with projects including a $640 million steel plant, a $2.6 billion power plant, and a $3 billion renewable energy plant, alongside a billion dollars' worth of real estate in Singapore.

• 7. Culture, Faith, and Identity

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  Chittagong is known as the Land of the Twelve Saints, a title earned by the density of Sufi Muslim shrines across the district. The shrine of Bayazid Bastami hosts a pond of black softshell turtles, a critically endangered species of freshwater turtle. The Chittagonian language, classified as a dialect of Bengali by some and a separate language by many linguists, carries Arabic, Persian, English, and Portuguese loanwords deposited by centuries of trade. The traditional feast of Mezban features a hot beef dish with white rice; kala-bhuna, made with traditional spices, mustard oil, and beef, is celebrated across Bangladesh. During the Bengal Sultanate era, the poet Kabindra Parameshvar wrote his Pandabbijay, a Bengali adaptation of the Mahabharata, under the patronage of Sultan Alauddin Husain Shah's governor in Chittagong. The city is regarded as the birthplace of Bangladeshi rock music, home to pioneering bands including Souls and LRB. Fashion designer Shimul Khaled is credited with introducing the first runway shows to the region. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, the economist who founded microcredit, was born here. The Karnaphuli Tunnel, the first and only underwater road tunnel in South Asia, now connects the city's northern and southern banks, a project overseen under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government.