Dipanjan Mazumder (curation and text) & Madhumita Chatterjee (photography)

Dipanjan Mazumder is a doctoral candidate at the Department of History, Delhi University. He is working on the histories of spaces and memories in pre-modern Bengal. He was awarded the ICHR Junior Research Fellowship in 2016. Besides his books, his hours are mostly spent with old maps, posters and Instagram.

This image gallery gives a glimpse of the remains of the magnificent structures erected in the independent Sultanate of Bengal (1342–1538), of which Pandua (1342–1432) and Gaur (1432–1538) were successively the capitals. Architecture received patronage from various ruling elites, including Indo-Turkish, Arab and Habshi elites and Bengali Muslims.  The built spaces exhibit a variety of influences, and are most important for showing the rise of the Bengali style which is distinctive with massive walls decorated with off-sets and recesses, octagonal corners, curved parapets and terracotta ornamentation. A regional interpretation of Islamic architecture is very well seen here.

 

Photographs by Madhumita Chatterjee                                            

 

 

References

Khan, M. Abid Ali. ​1931. Memoirs of Gaur and Pandua, ed. Henry Stapleton. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot.