List of rulers of Bengal (original) (raw)

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This is a list of rulers of Bengal. For much of its history, Bengal was split up into several independent kingdoms, completely unifying only several times. In ancient times, Bengal consisted of the kingdoms of Pundra, Suhma, Vanga, Samatata and Harikela. In the 4th century BCE, during the reign of the Nanda Empire, the powerful rulers of Gangaridai sent their forces with the war elephants which led the withdrawal of Alexander the Great from the Indian subcontinent. As a province of the Mauryan Empire, much of Bengal was part of it except for the far eastern Bengali kingdoms which maintained friendly relationships with Ashoka. The kingdoms of Bengal continued to exist as tributary states before succumbing to the Guptas. With the fall of the Gupta Empire, Bengal was united under a single local ruler, King Shashanka, for the first time. With the collapse of his kingdom, Bengal split up into petty kingdoms once more. With the rise of Gopala in 750 AD, Bengal was united once more under the Hindu Buddhist Pala Empire .The Pala period is considered as one of golden eras of bengali history as it brought stability and prosperity to Bengal after centuries of Civil War, created outstanding works of art and architecture ,proto- bengali language develop under them including its first literary work, the Charyapada and so on .Until the 12th century than being succeeded by the Hindu Chandra dynasty, Sena dynasty and deva dynasty. The rule of deva dynasty was a period ofpeace,propersity and creative excellence and may be designed as "golden age" After them, Bengal was ruled by the Hindu Maharajas of kingdoms such as Chandradwip and Cooch Behar. In the early 13th century, Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji conquered Western and part of Northern Bengal, and established the first Muslim kingdom in Bengal. The Islamic Mamluk Sultanate, the Khalji dynasty, the Turko-Indian Tughlaq dynasty, the Sayyid dynasty and the Lodi dynasty ruled Bengal for over 320 years. Notable was Malik Altunia's reign with his wife Razia Sultana, the only female sovereign ruler. Following Delhi Sultanate's reign, the Bengal Sultanate, a major trading nation in the world, was founded by Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah, and ruled by the Ilyas Shahi dynasty, succeeded by the Hussain Shahi dynasty founded by Alauddin Husain Shah, which saw the extension of the sultanate to the port of Chittagong, witnessing the arrival of the earliest Portuguese merchants. After being absorbed to the Bengal Subah by Babur in the 16th century during the defeat of Sultan Nasiruddin Nasrat Shah in the Battle of Ghaghra, Bengal became the most economically advanced region in the world, and started to be ruled by the Subahdars of the Mughal Empire. Emperor Akbar began to preach the newly invented religion of Din-i Ilahi, which was declared by the Qadi of Bengal to be a blasphemy. Islam Khan I declared Dhaka as the capital of Bengal, which was then known as Jahangir Nagar, renamed after emperor Jahangir. The reign of prince Shah Shuja under emperor Shah Jahan's orders represented the height of Mughal architecture. After the decline of the Mughal Empire, the Nawabs of Bengal and Murshidabad ruled over Bengal and Odisha. Nawab Alivardi Khan came victorious against the Maratha Empire in the Battle of Burdwan. Following the Battle of Plassey and the execution of Siraj ud-Daulah, the East India Company formally established control over Bengal, and the Bengal Presidency was established by Robert Clive, with the subdivision remaining the economic, cultural and educational hub of the Company and the Raj. The position of the Prime Minister of Bengal was established in 1937, being held by A. K. Fazlul Huq and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. After the Indian independence movement and Partition of Bengal (1947), the West Bengal became a major state of the Republic of India, while the Muslim majority East Bengal became known as East Pakistan. In 1971 East Bengal became an independent nation, Bangladesh, following the Bangladesh Liberation War, governed by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Ziaur Rahman and Hussain Muhammad Ershad. (en)

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Page 253 is in the middle of the bibliography, and contains no list of rulers or dates. (en)

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This is a list of rulers of Bengal. For much of its history, Bengal was split up into several independent kingdoms, completely unifying only several times. In ancient times, Bengal consisted of the kingdoms of Pundra, Suhma, Vanga, Samatata and Harikela. In the 4th century BCE, during the reign of the Nanda Empire, the powerful rulers of Gangaridai sent their forces with the war elephants which led the withdrawal of Alexander the Great from the Indian subcontinent. (en)

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