ABSTRACT
Beginning from the end of the 1530s Bengal experienced a series of problems for nearly seven decades. From the third decade of the sixteenth century the water of the Saraswati River began to withdraw to flow in the bed of the Hughly River making it difficult for the bigger ships to come up to the port of Satgaon. The Portuguese began to unload at Betore and then transport the goods in boats to the port of Satgaon. Gaur was attacked twice by Sher Shah and then it was occupied by Humayun who was replaced by Sher Shah again. The king of Orissa occupied Satgaon very briefly. Finally Sulaiman Karrani became the Sultan of Bengal who transferred the capital to Tanda further west of the Bhagirathi River. His son Daud Khan Karrani was killed by the Mughals in 1575 in a battle at Rajmahal and Munim Khan, the Mughal commander transferred the capital from Tanda to Gaur. But a severe plague started there and he was forced to transfer the capital back to Tanda where he died after ten days. One of the reasons for the transfer of the capital from Gaur was perhaps due to the fact that the river had moved away from Gaur but it appears from the narrative of Ralph Fitch visiting Tanda after 1586, that the river was still a mile from the city. He had seen commerce of cotton and cloth at Tanda and during the tide when the villages around were flooded. The defeat of the last Sultan did not mean that the Mughals had full control over the whole of Bengal. Both the Hindu and Afghan nobles of Daud Karrani began to fight the Mughals from Orissa and eastern Bengal for a considerable period creating problems for Bengal. It was Subadar Islam Khan, who before his death in 1613 had pacified most of Bengal and had already transferred the capital to Dacca from Rajmahal where Subadar Man Singh had taken over at the end of 1594. It is against this background that we would see the history of the city of Hughli.
