Sultanate of Bengal

The Bengal Sultanate was a late medieval sultanate of the Bengal region in eastern South Asia, the dominant power of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, with a network of mint towns spread across its territory. Five unrelated dynasties ruled it in succession, and it reached its peak under Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah: its raids and conquests carried it to Nepal in the north, the Brahmaputra valley in the east, and Jaunpur and Varanasi in the west. It had a wide circle of vassals, from parts of Odisha, Bihar and Assam to Arakan and Tripura, and it was famed as a trading nation, its ships reaching Malacca, China and the Maldives and drawing merchants from Asia, Africa and Europe. Its cities are known as mint towns from the taka coined in them; in 1500 the royal capital of Gaur was the fifth most populous city in the world, while Pandua had been the first capital, Sonargaon the commercial hub, Bagerhat a city of mosques and Chittagong the port. Persian was the language of government, diplomacy and trade, but the sultans gave Bengali its first court recognition as an official language, and the state was known for religious pluralism. Its decline began with the Sur interregnum and the Mughal conquest that broke it into petty kingdoms.