Farashganj ( bn, ফরাশগঞ্জ) is a neighborhood in

Dhaka Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), List of renamed places in Bangladesh, formerly known as Dacca, is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Bangladesh, largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mo ...

. The name comes from the Bengali word for French which is ''Forashi'' and ''ganj'', meaning market-town.

History

Farashganj literally means French town, it takes its name from French merchants based in Dhaka city. In 1740 the

French East India Company The French East India Company (french: Compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientales) was a colonial commercial enterprise, founded on 1 September 1664 to compete with the English (later British) and Dutch trading companies in th ...

started operations in Dhaka and built their "Kuthi" near Ahsan Manzil Palace with permission from Nowazish Mohammad Khan. The French got into minor conflicts with the British over a factory but was resolved through the mediation of Naib Nazim Jasarat Khan. The French merchants established wholesale trading posts for spices like raw

turmeric Turmeric () is a flowering plant, ''Curcuma longa'' (), of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, the rhizomes of which are used in cooking. The plant is a perennial, rhizomatous, herbaceous plant native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast ...

ginger Ginger (''Zingiber officinale'') is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice and a folk medicine. It is a herbaceous perennial which grows annual pseudostems (false stems made of the rolled bases of ...

garlic Garlic (''Allium sativum'') is a species of bulbous flowering plant in the genus '' Allium''. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, Welsh onion and Chinese onion. It is native to South Asia, Central Asia and northeas ...

and chilli. They built fine residences such as the

Ruplal House Ruplal House (formerly known as Aratoon House) is a 19th-century mansion in Farashganj area in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was built on the northern bank of the Buriganga River, beside the Buckland Dam. The house was built in 1825 by an Armenian busin ...

. In the late nineteenth century, an influx of lumber-yards and wooden furniture manufacturers made the neighborhood, "the new furniture centre of Dacca".

Geography

Farashganj is located on the northern bank of the Buriganga River in Old Dhaka. Its principal thoroughfares are B. K. Das Road and Ahsanullah Road.

Points of interest

There are a number of historic buildings in Farashganj, mostly dilapidated. The stately two-story riverside mansion

is now occupied by squatters. The once magnificent 19th-century mansion Bara Bari, with its ornate curved balconies over the street, has been partly demolished. Loharpul bridge also located in Farashganj. It was a great engineering feat at that time. In 1832 the collector of Dhaka, Mr. Walter put up work for a single-span

hanging bridge Hanging Bridge is a medieval bridge spanning the Hanging Ditch, which connected the rivers River Irk, Irk and River Irwell, Irwell in Manchester, England. The first reference to the bridge was in 1343, when it was called Hengand Brigge, but the ...

over the canal at Sutrapur (Farashganj) for facilitating passage from Dhaka to

Narayanganj Narayanganj ( bn, নারায়ণগঞ্জ ''Naraeongônj'') is a city in central Bangladesh. It is in the Narayanganj District, about southeast of the capital city of Dhaka, and has a population of about 2 million. It is the 6th large ...

History

Geography

Points of interest

References

Further reading