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Gaur (City of) one of the largest medieval cites in the Indian subcontinent, was the capital of Bengal from c. 1450 AD to 1565 AD. Located on the eastern strip of land between the Ganges and the Mahananda rivers, in lat. 24 52' N. and Long. 88 10' E., south of the present town of Malda, its ruins spread over nearly twenty miles in length and four miles in breadth.
It has been postulated that the earlier city of Laksmanavati (later Islamised as lakhnauti) was located at the same site. Alexander cunningham, however, placed Laksmanavati to the north of the ruins of Gaur on the basis of Hindu place names and the existence of the ruins of a fort traditionally associated with vallalasena. It has also been held that laksmanasena had transferred his capital to nadia in order to spend his last days on the bank of the Ganges, which is difficult to accept since the Ganges was flowing past the city of Laksmanavati as well. MM Chakrabarty held that at an earlier period the Ganges was flowing through the Mahananda but had gradually begun to detach itself from the Mahananda to move towards the west. james rennell has recorded its westward movement at the end of the eighteenth century as he found the Ganges nearly ten miles west of the ruins of Gaur. The existing palaeo-channels clearly mark such movements. In that case, Laksmanavati would be located on the western side of the Ganges-Mahananda channel, whose memory was perhaps embodied in the sketches of Lopo Homes (1519) and Gastaldi (1548), showing Gaur on the west of the river. One could surmise that Laksmanavati was abandoned by the Sena king due to the westward movement of the Ganges that might have washed away his capital. The remains of the sandy soil over a long area in palaeo-channels can still be seen. However, the pre-Muslim artifacts, both Buddhist and Hindu, are found only in the higher ground located to the south of the medieval Gaur fort.
The first inscription of Gaur, dated December 1457, during the reign of Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud I (1435-1459), on a bridge erected by him on the road from the kotwali darwaza (gate) in the south to the north of the city, suggests the date of transfer of the capital from pandua. One may not, therefore, accept abm habibullah's view that the capital was transferred in the early part of the fifteenth century during the reign of Sultan Jalaluddin. The visiting Chinese delegates during his reign clearly mentioned going to Pandua, then the capital of Bengal.
Gaur remained the capital of Bengal till 1565 when sulaiman karrani transferred it to tandah in the west. The Mughal general munim khan brought it back to Gaur in 1575 and was perhaps instrumental in constructing the lukochuri darwaza the eastern side of the fort, which is generally ascribed to shah shuja, subahdar of Bengal in the first half of the seventeenth century. But Shah Shuja had never lived at Gaur. Gaur was finally abandoned in 1575 due to the outbreak of plague.
Minhaj-us Siraj, visiting the renamed capital forty-five years after its conquest in 1205 by bakhtiyar khalji, saw mosques and madrasas built by him, which are not extant today. Since the embankments protecting the city were constructed in 1227, these buildings could not have been washed away by the river.
Apart from the Kotwali gate, ascribed to the fourteenth century on the basis of design, there were no other architectural remains of the 13th-14th centuries. Abid Ali, in the early twentieth century, identified the northwest area of the big Sagar Dighi between the Durbhasini and Phulwari gates (now disappeared) as the commercial centre of the old Laksmanavati, with the port of Gaur served by a canal. This seems highly unlikely since no pre-Muslim artifact has been found there. Ziauddin Barani in the fourteenth century had given the description of a long market with rows of shops on both sides stretching nearly two miles and leading to the old palace of the Senas. The Phulwari fort, two miles north of the present ruins of the fort of Gaur, has been termed a Hindu fort by Cunningham, and was used, according to Barani, by the son of Balban. However, excepting some black basalt stone slabs, no pre-Muslim artifact has been found there. On the other hand, while according to local tradition the fort was used by Shah Shuja, glazed bricks, broken pieces of clay pipes, inscribed porcelain pieces as well as coarse pottery found inside the walled fort (there is a ditch) would suggest its use in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
From the early fifteenth century, Gaur and Pandua were becoming populous. Perhaps it was the pressure of population that led Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud to shift the capital to Gaur from Pandua. The rise of the overseas port of Saptagram/satgaon took place around the same time. Since then, the immigration to Gaur continued at a brisk pace while other towns on the Bhagirathi also began to grow, mostly acting as suppliers of textile to Saptagram and Gaur. It is significant that the city of Gaur began to grow towards the south beyond the wall, whose remains have been recently explored by a Bangladesh team.
Henry Creighton, an indigo planter living near Gaur, gave a description of the morphology of the city in 1786, including a sketch of the place and superb drawings of its monuments. He found the ruins of the city extending up to ten miles in length and one and half mile in breadth, lying between the Ganges and the Mahananda; the latter became a lagoon by the end of the fifteenth century, as Castenhada de Lopez noted, and was named by Abul Fazl as Chatia Patia. The city had two big paved roads, parallel to the river, in the north-south direction, crisscrossed by smaller lanes and canals, some of which still exist.
Creighton's description was modified by James Rennell, Alexander Cunningham and JH Ravenshaw, who found the ruins extending up to twenty miles in length and four miles in breadth (later confirmed by aerial survey and explorations), thus extending beyond the boundary wall to the south.
Creighton's chief credit lies in sketching the fort and the palace, with the principal gate in the north, called the dakhil darwaza, probably built in the early part of the fifteenth century and later added to by successive rulers till nusrat shah in the early sixteenth century. From this gate an anonymous Portuguese interpreter who has left a valuable memoir went straight to the darbar hall of Nusrat Shah in 1521, who was then watching a game of polo being played on the plains below.
On the basis of the writings of Creighton and Francklin, Ravenshaw divided the palace into three compartments. The palace was enclosed by a high wall, called Baishgazi. A ditch enclosed the three sides of the palace and was connected to the Ganges, which guarded the western side of the fort. According to a contemporary Vaisnava poet, Sultan Alauddin husain shah saw a procession led by chaitanya on the opposite bank of the river.
It is clear that the first compartment from the north was the darbar, so clearly described by the Portuguese interpreter in 1521. Halfway from the Dakhil Darwaza there was a gate under which flowed a channel of water to supply a fountain, as recorded in the inscription of Sultan ruknuddin barbak shah (1466). According to the testimony of the Portuguese and the celebrated Bengali poet, Krittivasa, the road from the Dakhil Darwaza to the darbar had nine well-guarded gates at least two of which could be identified today.
The second compartment from the northern side is termed the living quarter of the sultan, where the multi-coloured tiled floor, described with admiration by humayun's companion, reminds one of the rich lifestyle of the pre-Mughal sultans of Bengal. The third compartment has been termed as Haram Sara or zenana mahal, as was attested by the visiting FrenchmanVincent Le Blanc in 1575. While from the third compartment nothing worth speaking has been found, the other two compartments have yielded extensive deluxe artifacts including multi-coloured bricks and porcelain pieces inscribed in Chinese, the first such find in Bengal of the period. Ruins of a building in the northeastern part of the first compartment have been called a treasury, but this cannot be confirmed. end of part 1