Goraghat

Ghoraghat stands by the Karatoya River in northern Bengal. Its fort and mosque recall a time when the town governed a wide tract of the north. The mosque stands in the south-eastern corner of the fort, and its inscription names Zainul Abedin, the Mughal faujdar of Ghoraghat, as its builder in 1740–41.

Under the Mughals, Ghoraghat was one of the sarkars, or fiscal and administrative divisions, of Bengal. The town remained the seat of authority over much of northern Bengal under the nawabs. In 1765 its last Muslim faujdar, Mir Karam Ali, was defeated by an East India Company commander. Company rule shifted the centre of administration to Dinajpur, while the fort at Ghoraghat preserved traces of the older provincial order in northern Bengal.