How Islam spread to Sylhet (Northeastern Bangladesh) 🧵

Shaykh al-Mashāʾikh Makhdūm Shaykh Jalāl Mujarrad bin Muḥammad Kunyāī better known as Hazrat Shah Jalal was one of the most famous scholars and preachers to have disseminated Islam throughout Bengal. He was born in Kunyia (today known as Konya, in present-day Turkey) in 1271.

His mother, Syeda Haseenah Fatimah, and his father, Mahmud ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim, were descendants of the Quraysh tribe in Makkah. Having lost both his father and mother very early on in life, young Shah Jalal was raised and
educated by his maternal uncle

Sayyid Ahmad Kabir Suhrawardi, who was a prominent Muslim scholar and practitioner of Sufism. Jalal was an adherent of the Yisiwiyyah Sufi order, which was an offshoot of the famous Naqshbandiyyah tariqah.

Being a gifted student, Jalal soon committed the entire Qur’an to memory and became familiar with the traditional Islamic sciences, thus acquiring proficiency in Arabic grammar, Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir), Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh),Prophetic traditions (hadith) and tasawwuf.

After Shah Jalal had completed his formal education, his uncle gave him a handful of earth. He then urged Shah Jalal to travel to India and settle in a place where the color of the soil matched the earth in his hand.

This sacred place, according to the author of Suhail-i-Yaman, was none other than Sylhet in East Bengal (located in the north east of present-day Bangladesh).

In 1303, Sultan Shamsuddin Firoz Shah of Lakhnauti was engaged in a war with the neighbouring Gour Kingdom in the Sylhet region, then under the rule of the Hindu king Gour Govinda. This began when Shaykh Burhanuddin, a Muslim living in Sylhet, sacrificed a cow for his newborn

son's aqiqah (birth celebration). Govinda, in a fury for what he saw as sacrilege, had the newborn killed as well as having Burhanuddin's right hand cut off. When word of this reached Sultan Firoz Shah, an army commanded by his nephew, Sikandar Khan

and later his (Commander-in-chief) Syed Nasiruddin, was sent against Gour. Three successive strikes were attempted, all ending in failure due to the Bengali armies’ inexperience in the foreign terrain as well as Govinda's superior military strategy.

A fourth attack, now with the aid of Shah Jalal and his companions (at this point numbering 360) was undertaken. The combined Muslim forces ultimately claimed victory against Gour. Govinda was forced to retreat and Sylhet was brought under Muslim control.

In recognition of his remarkable efforts and achievements, the Shah Jalal University of Science and Technology in Sylhet —which is one of Bangladesh’s leading universities—was named after him.

The country’s main international airport in Dhaka was also named after this Muslim scholar and preacher of Bengal.
Source: https://t.co/IQuC317jKN
Source: The Muslim heritage of Bengal by Mohammed Mojlum Khan

How Islam spread to Sylhet (Northeastern Bangladesh) 🧵

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