IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
AND THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 459
the river J6N1 unite in that neighbourhood before falling into the sea. The people of Bengal maintain a number of vessels on the river, with which they engage in war against the inhabitants of LAKNAOTI.2 The King of Bengal was the Sultan Fakhruddin, surnamed Fakhrah, a prince of distinction who was fond of foreigners, especially of Fakirs and 8((s.
The traveller then recapitulates the hands through which the sceptre of Bengal had passed from the time of the Sultan Nasiruddin (the Bakarra Khan of Elphinstone's History), son. of Balaban King of Dehli. After it had been held successively by two sons of Nasiruddin, the latter of these was attacked and killed by Mahomed Tughlak.3
Mahomed then named as governor of Bengal a brother-in-law of his own, who was murdered by the troops. Upon this Ali Shah, who was then at Laknaoti, seized the king-
the two is near the shore of the ocean, and we know moreover that it was in this part of Bengal that Fakhruddin set up his authority. Hence Ibn Batuta must have landed at Chittagong.
1 Jûn is the name which our traveller applies to the Jumna. But it is difficult to suppose that even Ibn Batuta's loose geography could conceive of the Jumna, whose banks he had frequented for eight years, as joining the Ganges near the sea. That now main branch of the Brahmaputra which flows into the Ganges near Jafargunge is called the Janai, and I have heard it called by natives Jumna, though this I supposed to be an accidental blunder. Whatever confusion existed in our traveller's mind, I suppose that it was the junction of the Ganges and Brahmaputra of which he had heard.
2 Laknaoti is the same as Gaur, long the capital of the Mahomedan governors and sultans in Bengal, the remains of which are scattered over an extensive site near Malda. Firishta distinguishes the three provinces into which Bengal was divided at this time as Laknaoti, Sunarganw, and Chatganw (Briggs, i, 423). It would seem that by Bengal Ibn Batuta means only the two latter.
3 The second of these princes, Ghaiassuddin Bahâdur Biirah, is entirely omitted by Firishta, but the fact of his reign has been established by a coin and other evidence, in corroboration of Ibn Batuta (Defr. and Sang. Preface to vol. iii, p. xxv). Some notes of mine from Stewart's History of Bengal appear to show that the reign of Bahâdur Shah is related in that work.
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