ABSTRACT
ORIGINAL SITE: Though originally belonging to an unnamed Sultanate bridge near Sultanganj, this inscription was found on a tomb in the village of Jahanabad near Sultanganj, four miles west of Godagari in Chapai Nawabganj district, Bangladesh. CURRENT LOCATION: Varendra Research Museum, Rajshahi, inventory no. 266. MATERIAL, SIZE: Black basalt, 42 × 8 inches. STYLE, NO. OF LINES: A non-traditional style somewhat resembling tawqī‘; three lines. REIGN: Sulṭān ‘Alā’ al-Dīn (607-610/1210-1213), the third Khaljī ruler after the Muslim conquest of Bengal. LANGUAGE, METER: Classical Persian; Baḥr Muḍāri‘ Muthamman Akhrab Makfuf Maḥdhūf ( ). TYPE: Commemorative inscription of a bridge written in Persian couplets. PUBLICATION: Ahmad Hasan Dani, Bibliography of the Muslim Inscriptions of Bengal, published as an appendix to the Journal of Asiatic Society of Pakistan 2 (Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Pakistan, 1957): 65-66 and 124; Abdul Karim, Corpus of the Arabic and Persian Inscriptions of Bengal (Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Pakistan, 1992): 319-320; Mohammad Yusuf Siddiq, Riḥla ma‘a ’l-Nuqūsh al-Kitābiyya al-Islāmiyya fī’l-Bangāl: Darāsa Tārīkhīyya Ḥaḍariyya (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 2004): 94-96; Siddiq, Mashriq men Islāmī Tahzīb ke Athār: Bangāl men ‘Arbī wa Fārsī Katbāt (Islamabad: NUST, 2013): 125.
