Sazzad's World

Cox's Bazar (Bengali: কক্সবাজার Kaksbajar) is a seaside town, a fishing port and district headquarters in Bangladesh. It is known for its wide and long sandy beach, which is considered by many as the world's longest natural sandy sea beach.^[2][3] The beach in Cox's Bazar is an unbroken 125 kilometres (78 mi) sandy sea beach with a gentle slope. It is located 152 kilometres (94 mi) south of the industrial port of Chittagong. Cox's Bazar is also known by the name Panowa, whose literal translation means "yellow flower". Its other old name was "Palongkee".

Tourist attractions near the town

• Aggmeda Khyang: a large Buddhist monastery, and a place revered by around 400,000 Buddhist people of Cox's Bazar; and the Chittagong Hill Tracts. The main sanctuary is posted on a series of round timber columns. It has a prayer chamber and an assembly hall along with a repository of large and small bronze Buddha images and a number of old manuscripts.
• Ramu: about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from Cox's Bazar,^[20] is a village with a sizeable Buddhist population. The village is famous for its handicrafts and homemade cigars. There are monasteries, khyangs, and pagodas containing images of Buddha in bronze, gold, and other metals with precious stones. The temple on the bank of the Baghkhali river houses not only relics and Burmese handicrafts but also a large bronze statue of Buddha measuring thirteen feet in height which rests on a six-foot-high pedestal. Weavers ply their trade in open workshops and craftsmen make handmade cigars in their pagoda-like houses.
• Bangabandhu Sheikh MujibSafari Park: Bangabandhu Sheikh MujibSafari Park is the first Safari Park in Bangladesh. The nature of the forest is tropical evergreen and rich with Garjan, Boilam, Telsur, and Chapalish along with herbs, shrubs, and creepers. Safari Park is a declared protected area where the animals are kept in fairly large areas with natural environments and visitors can see the animals by bus or jeep or on foot. This park was established on the basis of the South Asian model. This safari park is an extension of an animal sanctuary located along the Chittagong-Cox's Bazar road about 50 kilometres (31 mi) from Cox's Bazar town. The sanctuary itself protects a large number of wild elephants that are native to the area. In the safari park, there are domesticated elephants that are available for a ride. Other animal attractions include lions, Bengal tigers, crocodiles, bears, chitals, and many different types of birds and monkeys.

The Sundarbans (Bengali: সুন্দরবন, Shundorbôn) is the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world.^[2] The Sunderbans is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, most of which situated in Bangladesh and the remaining in India.
The Sundarbans National Park is a National Park, Tiger Reserve, and a Biosphere Reserve located in the Sundarbans delta in the Indian state of West Bengal. Sundarbans South, East and West are three protected forests in Bangladesh. This region is densely covered by mangrove forests, and is one of the largest reserves for the Bengal tiger.
The name Sundarban can be literally translated as "beautiful forest" in the Bengali language (Shundor, "beautiful" and bon, "forest"). The name may have been derived from the Sundari trees (the mangrove species Heritiera fomes) that are found in Sundarbans in large numbers. Alternatively, it has been proposed that the name is a corruption of Samudraban, Shomudrobôn ("Sea Forest"), or Chandra-bandhe (name of a primitive tribe). However, the generally accepted view is the one associated with Sundari trees.^[2]

 

 

History

The history of the area can be traced back to 200–300 AD. A ruin of a city built by Chand Sadagar has been found in the Baghmara Forest Block. During the Mughal period, the Mughal Kings leased the forests of the Sundarbans to nearby residents. Many criminals took refuge in the Sundarbans from the advancing armies of Emperor Akbar. Many have been known to be attacked by Tigers^[3] Many of the buildings which were built by them later fell to hands of Portuguese pirates, salt smugglers and dacoits in the 17th century. Evidence of the fact can be traced from the ruins at Netidhopani and other places scattered all over Sundarbans.^[4] The legal status of the forests underwent a series of changes, including the distinction of being the first mangrove forest in the world to be brought under scientific management. The area was mapped first in Persian, by the Surveyor General as early as 1764 following soon after proprietary rights were obtained from the Mughal Emperor Alamgir II by the British East India Company in 1757. Systematic management of this forest tract started in the 1860s after the establishment of a Forest Department in the Province of Bengal, in British India. The management was entirely designed to extract whatever treasures were available, but labour and lower management mostly were staffed by locals, as the British had no expertise or adaptation experience in mangrove forests.^[5]







The first Forest Management Division to have jurisdiction over the Sundarbans was established in 1869. In 1875 a large portion of the mangrove forests was declared as reserved forests under the Forest Act, 1865 (Act VIII of 1865). The remaining portions of the forests were declared a reserve forest the following year and the forest, which was so far administered by the civil administration district, was placed under the control of the Forest Department. A Forest Division, which is the basic forest management and administration unit, was
created in1879 with the headquarters in Khulna, Bangladesh. The first management plan was written for the period 1893–98.^[6][7]
In 1911, it was described as a tract of waste country which had never been surveyed, nor had the census been extended to it. It then stretched for about 165 miles (266 km) from the mouth of the Hugli to the mouth of the Meghna river and was bordered inland by the three settled districts of the 24 Parganas, Khulna and Bakerganj. The total area (including water) was estimated at 6,526 square miles (16,902 km²). It was a water-logged jungle, in which tigers and other wild beasts abounded. Attempts at reclamation had not been very successful. The Sundarbans was everywhere intersected by river channels and creeks, some of which afforded water communication throughout the Bengal region both for steamers and for native boats.

The Sixty Dome Mosque (Bengali: ষাট গম্বুজ মসজিদ Shaṭ Gombuj Moshjid) (more commonly known as Shait Gambuj Mosque or Saith Gunbad Masjid) is a mosque in Bangladesh, the largest in that country from the Sultanate period. It has been described as "the most impressive Muslim monuments in the whole of the Indian subcontinent."^[1]
In mid-15th century, a Muslim colony was founded in the unfriendly mangrove forest of the Sundarbans near the coastline in the Bagerhat district by an obscure saint-General, named Ulugh Khan Jahan. He was the earliest torch bearer of Islam in the South who laid the center of an affluent city during the reign of Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud Shah, then known as 'Khalifalabad'.^[2] Khan Jahan adorned his city with numerous mosques, the spectacular ruins of which are focused around the most imposing and largest multidomed mosques in Bangladesh, known as the Shait-Gumbad Masjid (160'×108').^[2] The construction of the mosque was started in 1442^[2] and it was completed in 1459.The mosque was used for prayer purposes. It was also used as a madrasha and assembly hall.^[3]

 

 

 

Location

It is located in Bagerhat district in southern Bangladesh which is in the division of Khulna.^[4] It is about 3 miles far from the main town of Bagerhat.^[5] Bagerhat is nearly 200 miles away from Dhaka which is the capital of Bangladesh.^[3]

Style

The 'Sixty Dome' Mosque has walls of unusually thick, tapered brick in the Tughlaq style and a hut-shaped roofline that anticipates later styles. The length of the mosque is 160 feet and width is 108 feet. There are 77 low domes arranged in seven rows of eleven, and one dome on each corner, bringing the total to 81 domes. There are four towers. Two of four towers were used to call azaan. The interior is divided into many aisles and bays by slender columns, which culminate in numerous arches that support the roof.
The mosque has 77 squat domes with 7 four-sided pitched Bengali domes in the middle row.The vast prayer hall, although provided with 11 arched doorways on east and 7 each on north and south for ventilation and light, presents a dark and somber appearance inside. It is divided into 7 longitudinal aisles and 11 deep bays by a forest of 60 slender stone columns, from which springs rows of endless arches, supporting the domes. Six feet thick, slightly tapering walls and hollow and round, almost detached corner towers, resembling the bastions of fortress, each capped by small rounded cupolas, recall the Tughlaq architecture of Delhi.The mosque represents wonderful archeological beauty which was the signature in the 15th century.

 

 

Sixty Domes or Sixty Columns

The mosque is locally known as the 'Shat Gombuj Masjid', which in Bangla means Sixty Domed Mosque. However, there are 77 domes over the main hall and exactly 60 stone pillars.^[5] It is possible that the mosque was originally referred to as the Sixty Pillared Mosque where Amud (شصت عمؤد ) meaning column in Arabic/Persian, later got corrupted to Gombuj (গম্বুজ) in Bangla, which means domes.

Rayer Bazaar Bodhdhobhumi is located in Mohammadpur near Beribadh area in Dhaka District.^[2] This area is mainly an extension of the Turag River. The Martyred Intellectuals Memorial was established here in 14 December 1993 by ex Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia.

History

During the Mughal period this place was famous for pottery and most of the potters of this region used to live in Rayer Bazar, because the famous “lal mati” was available in this place a lot. During the Mughal and British Colonial period, the red clay was not available in the neighborhoods. As a result, the Potters of Rayer Bazar have a long tradition of working with this red clay.^[3] According to Dr. Wise, this place was known as “Kumartoli” during the Mughal period.^[4]
“Rayer Bazar will remain in our memories, in our history for another reason. In the night of 14 December 1971, many of Bangladesh’s intellectuals including professors, journalists, doctors, artists, engineers, and writers were rounded up in Dhaka. They were taken blindfolded to torture cells in Mirpur, Mohammadpur, Nakhalpara, Rajarbagh and other locations in different sections of the city. Later they were executed and thrown out in the swamps, at Rayerbazar.
In memory of the martyred intellectuals of 1971, a Memorial is created in there. The ‘Al-Badr’ and ‘Al-Shams’ Group helped the West Pakistan Army to locate the intellectuals and slaughtered them and many other innocent peoples at night. After the massacre they brought the corpses and left them into the swamps of Rayer Bazaar. After the Liberation War, the people of Dhaka found out that all the dead bodies of many great intellectuals and innocent people are piled up in here.”^[5] Martyred Intellectuals Memorial is the memorial built for the memory of the martyred intellectuals of 1971. The memorial is built in the Boddhobhumi at Rayer Bazaar.


This is the place where thousands of civilian were killed by Pakistani Army during 1971 Independence War. Boddho Bhumi Smriti Soudha (Slaughter-Place Memorial) was built to commemorate the death of some of the nation's finest intellectuals and others, who were killed at the very end of the war of liberation (1971) by the Pakistani army with the help of their collaborators at Rayer Bazaar brick field of Dhaka. The memorial edifice was constructed at the place where the mass killing took place. Among the people killed indiscriminately were educationists, physicians, journalists, writers, film directors and other professionals ^[7]

Bangladesh (officially called People's Republic of Bangladesh) is a country in South Asia. It is next to the North-east Indian provincial regions of India, which converges with Southeast Asia to the east. Its full name is The People's Republic of Bangla-Desh.

The capital and the largest city is Dhaka (also spelled 'Dacca'). Bangladesh is surrounded on all three sides by the Republic of India (Bharat), and Myanmar (Burma) on the south-eastern corner, it is near the People's Republic of China, Bhutan, Sikkim and Nepal. Its independence was fully realized after it declared it self as independent most of 1971 from Pakistan after a bloody war in which over a million people died. Later by Indian military intervention, by that time the provisional government went into exile in Calcutta, Bengal (India) which they considered their homeland to be under Pakistani military occupation. After the Instrument of Surrender, the Bengali peoples became a sovereign nation and when its founder was released from political imprisonment had returned in 1972. Present-day Bangladesh has an area of 56,977 mi² or (147,570 km²).
The local currency is called Taka. The official language is Bengali. 
I feel proud as a Bangladeshi.