ʿAlā ad-Dīn Fīrūz Shāh ( bn, আলাউদ্দীন ফিরোজ শাহ, fa, ) was the son and successor of Sultan Nasiruddin Nasrat Shah of

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

. He served as a governor of Chittagong during his father's reign, and was a patron of

Bengali literature Bengali literature ( bn, বাংলা সাহিত্য, Bangla Sahityô) denotes the body of writings in the Bengali language and which covers Old Bengali, Middle- Bengali and Modern Bengali with the changes through the passage of time ...

. Firuz Shah ascended the throne in 1533, though it was not unanimously recognised by all the nobles of Bengal. The conflict with the Ahom kingdom continued during his reign and the Bengali army led by Turbak Khan had reached as far as

Kaliabor Kaliabor, a sub-division town in Nagaon district of Assam situated at a distance of 48 km east of Nagaon town. It was the headquarters of Borphukans during the Ahom era. Kaliabor lies in the middle of assam and surrounded in the north by t ...

. Within three months as Sultan, Firuz Shah was assassinated by his uncle, who succeeded him as Sultan

Ghiyasuddin Mahmud Shah Ghiyasuddin Mahmud Shah ( bn, গিয়াসউদ্দীন মাহমুদ শাহ, fa, غیاث الدین محمود شاه) was the last Sultan of the Hussain Shahi dynasty of the Bengal Sultanate, reigning from 1533 to 1538 CE. Th ...

Early life and background

Firuz was born in the Sultanate of Bengal to an aristocratic

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

Sunni Muslim family known as the Hussain Shahi dynasty. His father, Nasiruddin Nasrat Shah, was a son of Sultan Alauddin Husain Shah of Bengal and a son-in-law of Sultan Ibrahim Lodi of

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

. From an early age, Firuz was an admirer of

. As a royal prince and governor of Chittagong, Firuz requested a writer known as Dvija Sridhara to compose the ''Vidya-Sundar'' love story in Bengali poetry form. which was completed later during his reign. Sridhara continuously praised Firuz in the poem for his good manners and wisdom.

Reign

Sultan Nusrat Shah was assassinated by a

eunuch A eunuch ( ) is a male who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2nd millenni ...

when returning from a visit to the tomb of his father, Alauddin Husain Shah. Following his death, the throne was contested between his son, Firuz, and his brother,

Mahmud Mahmud is a transliteration of the male Arabic given name (), common in most parts of the Islamic world. It comes from the Arabic triconsonantal root Ḥ-M-D, meaning ''praise'', along with ''Muhammad''. Siam Mahmud *Mahmood (singer) (born 19 ...

. Mahmud had served as an '' ameer'' during his brother's reign and the 20th-century historian

Jadunath Sarkar Sir Jadunath Sarkar (10 December 1870 – 19 May 1958) was a prominent Indian historian and a specialist on the Mughal dynasty. Academic career Sarkar was born in Karachmaria village in Natore, Bengal to Rajkumar Sarkar, the local Zamindar ...

suggests that Mahmud was the

heir apparent An heir apparent, often shortened to heir, is a person who is first in an order of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting by the birth of another person; a person who is first in the order of succession but can be displaced by the b ...

due to his early usage of royal insignia. Nevertheless, the nobles of the Sultanate including Mahmud's brother-in-law Makhdum Alam, the Governor of North Bihar, installed Firuz Shah to the throne. On the first day of Ramadan 939 AH (27 March 1533), a congregational mosque was built in Kalna, Burdwan by Ulugh Masnad Khan, who was Firuz Shah's governor, commander and minister. Within the space of three months, Firuz Shah was assassinated by his uncle, Mahmud, who succeeded him as the Sultan of Bengal.

Legacy

The ''

Riyaz-us-Salatin Riyaz-us-Salatin ( fa, ) is the first British-era historic book on the Muslim rule in Bengal that was published in Bengal in 1788. It was written by Ghulam Husain Salim Zaidpuri. Content The books starts with the arrival of Muhammad bin Bakhti ...

'', written by

Ghulam Husain Salim Ğulām Husayn "Salīm" Zaydpūrī was a historian who migrated to Bengal and was employed there as a postmaster to the English East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded i ...

in 1787, was the first history of Bengal which mentioned Firuz Shah, with his name being absent from the earlier chronicles, such as those written by

Firishta Firishta or Ferešte ( fa, ), full name Muhammad Qasim Hindu Shah Astarabadi ( fa, مُحَمَّد قاسِم هِندو شاہ), was a Persian historian, who later settled in India and served the Deccan Sultans as their court historian. He was ...

and Nizamuddin Ahmad. Though Salim's source is unknown, a century later,

Heinrich Blochmann Heinrich Blochmann, known as Henry Ferdinand Blochmann (8 January 1838 – 13 July 1878), was a German orientalist and scholar of Persian language and literature who spent most of his career in India, where he worked first as a professor, and event ...

publicised the inscription adjacent to the Kalna Shahi Mosque which commemorated the mosque's construction by Ulugh Masnad Khan. During this time, the mosque was still in use and its guardians were known to have held large ''

bigha The bigha (also formerly beegah) is a traditional unit of measurement of area of a land, commonly used in India (including Uttarakhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Assam, Gujara ...

s'' of land. Coins from Firuz Shah's reign were also found which are now kept in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Firuz Shah, Alauddin Year of death unknown Assassinated royalty Year of birth unknown 16th-century Indian monarchs 1533 deaths Hussain Shahi dynasty 16th-century Bengalis Rulers of Chittagong

Early life and background

Reign

Legacy

See also

References

Bibliography