Murshidabad

• 1. Introduction

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  Murshidabad is a town on the eastern bank of the Bhagirathi River in the Indian state of West Bengal, and for seventy years it was the capital of the Bengal Subah. The gates of its great fort were built so high and so wide that an elephant could pass through them, and musicians once played from galleries above the entrances. Today the town is the headquarters of the Lalbag subdivision of Murshidabad district. During the 18th century it was prosperous and cosmopolitan, a place where bankers and merchants from across the Indian subcontinent and wider Eurasia did business under one roof. Who built such a city, and why here? Who paid for it, and who came to trade there? And what happened when the power behind it was broken?

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• 2. Silk Before The Capital

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  In 1621, English agents reported that large quantities of silk were available in the area around what would become Murshidabad. The 17th century had already made the region well known for sericulture, the raising of silkworms for thread. Two older texts record the earliest stirrings of the town. The Riyaz-us-Salatin credits its initial development to a merchant named Makhsus Khan, and the Ain-i-Akbari also mentions his role. Long before that, the land belonged to the ancient Gauda Kingdom and Vanga Kingdom of Bengal. During the 1660s the settlement became a pargana, an administrative district, of the Mughal government. Its jurisdiction included the European companies at Cossimbazar, a connection that would shape the city's fortunes for the next century.

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• 3. The Founder's Gamble

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  Murshid is an Arabic word for a teacher or guide of integrity, sensibility and maturity, and the suffix -abad comes from a Persian word meaning a cultivated place. Together they name the city after its founder, Nawab Murshid Quli Khan. In the early 18th century he served as prime minister of Bengal Subah and was locked in a bitter rivalry with Prince Azim-ush-Shan, the viceroy of Bengal. The prince even tried to have him killed. Meanwhile the Mughal court in Delhi was losing its grip across the subcontinent. In that weakening order, Emperor Farrukhsiyar raised Khan to the rank of princely Nawab, which gave him the chance to found a dynasty. Khan then moved the capital out of Dhaka, which had lost strategic importance once the Arakanese and Portuguese were expelled from Chittagong. His new seat sat at the centre of a larger realm covering Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The next question was what he would build there.

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• 4. Palaces, Mosques And Gardens

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  The Katra Masjid is a grand mosque attached to a caravanserai, a lodging place for travellers, and Murshid Quli Khan built it along with his own palace. A main military base stood near the mosque and formed the city's eastern gateway. The third Nawab, Shuja-ud-Din Muhammad Khan, added another palace and base, a new gateway, a revenue office and a public audience hall called a durbar. He also built a private chamber, a treasury and a mosque, all within a sprawling compound named Farrabagh, the Garden of Joy. It held canals, fountains, flowers and fruit trees. Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah later set up a palace near the Motijhil, or Pearl Lake. The Nizamat Imambara was raised for Shia Muslims, and the whole palace complex was fortified as the Nizamat Fort. Burial of the Nawabs took place in the Khoshbagh garden. The people who filled these buildings came from far beyond Bengal.

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• 5. Bankers, Mint And Merchants

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  The Murshidabad mint grew to be the largest in Bengal, accounting for two percent of the minted currency. Around it gathered the princely court, the Mughal Army, artisans and merchants of many origins, and wealthy families and companies set up their head offices in the city. Brokers, workers, peons, naibs and wakils crowded its streets alongside ordinary traders. Most residents were Bengali, both Muslim and Hindu. An influential Jain community worked in trade and commerce, and Armenians settled and became financiers for the Nawab. The Jagat Seth family ranked among the most prominent bankers. They controlled money lending and served as financiers to administrators, merchants, traders, the Nawabs and the zamindars. Their clients also included the British, French, Armenians and Dutch. Merchants raised mansions such as the Azimganj Rajbati, Kathgola house and Nashipur house. Such wealth drew foreign companies close to the capital.

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• 6. The Company Towns

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  Agreements with the Nawabs of Bengal let numerous European trading companies establish bases in the region. The French East India Company ran factories in Murshidabad and in Dhaka. The British East India Company was based in Fort William. Murshidabad belonged to the Dutch Bengal Department, and the Ostend Company of Austria founded a base near the city. The Danish East India Company set up trading posts elsewhere in the Bengal Subah. Most of these factories stood on the outskirts of the city rather than within it. Rivals for the same cloth and silk, these companies relied on the same Nawabs for permission to trade. That dependence would be tested when one of them stopped asking.

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• 7. After Plassey

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  In 1757, Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, was defeated at the Battle of Plassey. He had been promised French support, yet his own commander, Mir Jafar, betrayed him. The British installed Mir Jafar's family as a puppet dynasty and eventually reduced the Nawab to a zamindar, a landlord, known as the Nawab of Murshidabad. They kept collecting revenue from the area's factories. The Bengal Famine of 1770 hit Murshidabad very badly. Warren Hastings moved the supreme civil and criminal courts to Calcutta in 1772, then brought them back to Murshidabad in 1775. In 1790, under Lord Cornwallis, the entire revenue and judicial staffs left for Calcutta. The Nawab stayed, ranked as the first nobleman of the province with the style of Nawab Bahadur of Murshidabad. The Hazarduari Palace rose in 1837 as a residence for both the Nawab and British civil servants. The merchant families kept prospering under company rule, and in 1858 the British government took direct control of India's administration. Murshidabad became a municipality in 1869.

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• 8. Murshidabad Today

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  The 2011 census counted 44,019 people in Murshidabad, living in 9829 households. Literacy stood at 73.7 percent of the whole population, and the effective literacy rate for those aged 7 and above reached 81.9 percent. The city is Hindu by a large majority at 75.09 percent, with Muslims at 23.86 percent. Earlier counts were smaller. An estimate for the 19th century put the population at 46,000, while the figure for 1901 was 15,168. In that period the silk industry was revived with government help, and the area also became known for mangoes and litchis. Today the city is a centre for agriculture, handicrafts and sericulture. Murshidabad silk is in demand for saris and scarves. Since 2011 the Murshidabad Heritage Festival has been held every winter, usually in January or February. It brings heritage walks, cultural performances and a cruise on the Bagirati River. The food served is purely vegetarian, with special emphasis on Sheherwali cuisine. The festival also takes in the nearby heritage towns of Azimganj, Jiaganj and Cossimbazar.

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