Gaur

Gaur, also called Lakhnauti, was the greatest city of medieval Bengal, spread along the Ganges and the Mahananda with a citadel, canals, tanks and brick mosques faced with glazed tile. Boats crowded the river landings below its walls, and weavers, goldsmiths and merchants filled its quarters. For centuries it stood for Bengal itself.

When the sultanate of Bengal formed, the seat of power moved. In 1342 Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah overthrew the governor at Lakhnauti and by 1352 had united Bengal under his rule, with Pandua as his capital. In 1450 Sultan Mahmud Shah announced the return to Gaur, which was complete by 1453. In 1465 the sultan Ruknuddin Barbak Shah raised the Dakhil Darwaza, the ceremonial gate of the citadel.

Gaur reached its height under the Husain Shahi sultans. Estimates of its population range from forty thousand in 1515 to two hundred thousand, and Portuguese visitors compared its wealth with Lisbon's. In the 1520s Sultan Nusrat Shah completed the Bara Sona Mosque. In 1538 the Mughal emperor Humayun entered the city after Sher Shah's departure and renamed it Jannatabad, but sickness and Sher Shah's return drove him out. The Karrani rulers moved the capital to Tanda in 1565. In 1575 the Mughal governor Munim Khan restored Gaur, and then an epidemic killed him and his army. The river drifted away from the walls, and the capital was abandoned.