Photo Feature

Grandeur from the past

Sonargaon was the administrative centre of eastern Bengal under the Muslim rulers of Bengal. It survives at present in the name of an upazila in the Narayanganj district and the 'golden village' (its literal meaning) is now a township about 27 kilometers to the southeast of Dhaka. It is difficult to locate exactly the medieval city, but from the extant remains it appears to have embraced a wide tract bounded on the east, west and south by the Meghna, the Shitalakhya and the Dhaleshwari respectively and on the north by the Brahmaputra. It rose to some eminence in the nineteenth century when Panam-Nagar was established as a trading centre in cotton fabrics, chiefly legendary Muslin fabric. The extant remains of Panam-Nagar represent residential houses built by Hindu merchants following colonial style with inspiration derived from European sources.

Photos: Raiyan-ul-Momin,
Student of Architecture, BRAC University