Idrakpur Fort

• 1. Introduction

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  Idrakpur Fort stands on a riverbank in Munshiganj, Bangladesh, a brick stronghold historians say was raised around 1660 by order of the Mughal Empire. Bengal was then one of the wealthiest provinces under Mughal rule, and its rivers carried both trade and raiders who struck at will.

  The governor behind the fort answered piracy with a plan built in threes, stationing a river fortress at Munshiganj alongside two more near Narayanganj. What made one man trust three forts and a fleet of ships to hold back a coastline of raiders? The chapters ahead follow his rise to power, the trap he built across three sites, and the fort's own hidden chambers.

• 2. The Pirate Province

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  Bengal fell under Mughal control in 1574, after imperial forces defeated Daud Khan Karrani. The new rulers governed with what accounts call a progressive rule, presiding over a province whose wealth drew river pirates again and again.

  A succession crisis inside the Mughal Empire soon reached Bengal's shores. Shah Shuja, the second son of Emperor Shah Jahan and Bengal's own Subahdar, marched toward Agra to claim his father's throne. Aurangzeb, once he took the throne, needed someone who understood naval warfare to deal with a rival ruling from the water.

• 3. A Trader Turned Governor

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  Mir Muhammad Saeed Ardestani, known to history as Mir Jumla II, had spent his early years as a successful trader in maritime commerce. Aurangzeb entrusted him with the task of dealing with Shah Shuja, whose stronghold lay in the river-bound province of Bengal.

  Mir Jumla II moved quickly into Bengal and forced Shah Shuja into retreat. In 1660 he was appointed Subahdar, the governor of Bengal, a post that put the province's defence in his hands.

  Once in charge, Mir Jumla II moved the provincial capital from Rajmahal to Dhaka, a river city vulnerable to the same pirates. To guard his new capital, he devised a defence strategy built around three river forts, with Idrakpur at Munshiganj as one of them.

• 4. Three Forts One Trap

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  Munshiganj sat at the meeting point of four rivers: the Meghna, the Shitalakshya, the Ichhamati and the Dhaleshwari, a natural chokepoint for river traffic. Idrakpur Fort itself rose on the bank where the Ichhamati meets the Meghna.

  Portuguese and Magh pirates used this junction to slip toward Dhaka along the Shitalakshya River, looting the cities of Sonargaon and Bikrampur on the way. Bikrampur's wealth mattered enough to Mir Jumla II that he wanted the region developed as well as defended.

  Idrakpur Fort became the centre of the plan, doubling as a naval base for a fleet of 200 frigates under the Mughal admiral Abul Hossain. When pirates advanced, Mughal forces were ordered to fire mortars from both the fort's cannons and the battleships, leaving the raiders to retreat or sink.

  Any pirate ship that survived that barrage still had to pass the Sonakanda and Hajiganj forts, guarding the eastern and western banks of the Shitalakshya River. There, round-shot fire waited to finish what the mortars had started.

• 5. Walls And Bastions

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  Idrakpur's builders gave it a shape unlike other Mughal river forts, splitting the structure into a quadrangular eastern half and a polygonal western half. The whole compound was built of brick, its open ground ringed by a wall with bastions rising at each corner.

  That wall runs north to south for 86.87 meters, spanning 59.60 meters in width. Machicolations pierce the wall, openings the garrison used to target enemy boats on the river and fire mortars down at them. Towers along the perimeter let soldiers track approaching ships before they came within range.

  None of these features drew as much attention from later observers as one structure rising in the fort's eastern half.

• 6. The Drum's Secret

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  That structure is a circular drum, 32.5 meters across and 9.14 meters high, raised in three layers and reached by its own staircase. A separate fortification wall encloses the drum, built to support the mounting of a single heavy cannon.

  The staircase inside leads down to a secret room at the drum's foot, an underground chamber that served as a magazine for arms and explosives. Some accounts claim this same passage once formed part of a secret tunnel connecting Idrakpur to Lalbagh Fort in Dhaka.

  The fort's main gate faces north, its high rectangular bastion crowned with machicolated merlons that doubled as a guard room. It stood as the last checkpoint between the river and whatever route that secret staircase was rumored to hide.