Latest / The Hidden History of Bengal: Kingdoms, Empires, and Revolution — Fexingo History / The Silk Road's Bengal Connection: Temples, Pirates, and a Venetian Merchant
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked about Ibn Battuta's visit to Bengal in the 1340s, but he wasn't the only globe-trotting traveler to leave a record. About seventy years later, a Venetian merchant named Niccolò da Conti spent several months in the Bengal Sultanate, and his account gives us a very different — and in some ways more detailed — picture. Lucas: Da Conti traveled throughout Asia for twenty-five years, visiting India, Southeast Asia, and even China. When he returned to Venice in the 1440s, he dictated his travels to the papal secretary, Poggio Bracciolini. And that manuscript survived. It's one of the earliest European descriptions of Bengal. Luna: What did he find that was so striking? Lucas: He was amazed by the wealth. He described Bengal as a land flowing with abundance — rice, sugarcane, ginger, and above all, textiles. He writes about the fine cotton cloths, the famous muslin of Dhaka, which he says were so delicate they were called 'woven air'. And he notes that the people were prosperous, the cities large. Lucas: But he also described something that shocks modern readers: the practice of sati, or widow burning. He says it was common among the noble classes, and he even recounts witnessing a widow voluntarily ascending the pyre. This is one of the earliest European eyewitness accounts of sati in Bengal. Luna: That's grim. But it's a real snapshot of the society he walked into. Lucas: Exactly. And it's not the only darkness — he also mentions the pirates of the Sundarbans, the vast mangrove forest that lines the delta. He says the local rulers had to constantly deal with pirates from the Arakan coast, who would raid the river villages. That's a problem that would persist for centuries, and eventually pull in the Portuguese. Lucas: Now, the ruler da Conti encountered was Sultan Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah. You might remember from our episode on the forgotten sultans that Jalaluddin was a converted Muslim, formerly a Hindu prince named Jadu. He reigned from 1418 to 1433, and his court was in Gaur or Pandua. Luna: Right, he's the one who built the Adina Mosque? Lucas: That's a different sultan — Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah built the Adina Mosque. Jalaluddin is remembered for more syncretic policies. He actually restored the Jagannath Temple in Puri, which had been damaged earlier. That's a remarkable gesture from a Muslim sultan to a Hindu deity. Lucas: But da Conti's account doesn't mention that. He's more interested in commerce and geography. He describes the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, and he says Bengal had a navy of small boats that could navigate the countless rivers. Luna: So Bengal was integrated into the Indian Ocean trade network long before the Europeans showed up? Lucas: Absolutely. Bengal was a hub. Textiles went west to the Middle East and Europe, and east to Southeast Asia. Da Conti himself traveled from Bengal to Burma, then to Java, and eventually back to Venice. So he saw the whole chain. Lucas: Now, there's another figure from around that same time who left a different kind of mark on Bengal's landscape: Khan Jahan Ali. He was a saint and a military commander under the Bengal Sultanate in the early 15th century, and he founded a city in the Sundarbans region called Bagerhat. Luna: Bagerhat — that's the Sixty Dome Mosque, right? Lucas: Yes, the Shat Gombuj Masjid, which actually has seventy-seven domes, not sixty. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it's just one of about 360 mosques, tombs, and bridges that Khan Jahan Ali built. He also constructed a complex network of tanks and reservoirs to store fresh water in the brackish delta. Lucas: The architecture is fascinating. It uses small, thin bricks — a technique borrowed from pre-Islamic Bengal — and terracotta ornamentation. The style is distinctly Bengali, not purely Islamic. It's a fusion, like much of Bengal's culture. Luna: So we have a Venetian merchant, a syncretic sultan, and a saint-architect all in the same century. That's a lot of layers. Lucas: Right. And the connections don't stop there. Da Conti's writings influenced later European explorers, including a certain Christopher Columbus. There's a copy of da Conti's travels in the library of Columbus, annotated in his own hand. So Bengal, in a way, helped shape the European imagination of the East. Luna: Wait, Columbus read about Bengal? Lucas: He did. Da Conti described Bengal as a land of great wealth and civilization, and that fed into the European desire to find a direct sea route to India. So Bengal was part of the prelude to the Age of Discovery. Lucas: Now, let's circle back to the pirates. The Sundarbans remained a haven for pirates for centuries. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Arakanese kingdom — located in modern-day Myanmar — allied with Portuguese adventurers to raid Bengal's coasts. They called themselves the 'Tanga' or 'Magh' pirates. Lucas: They would sail up the river channels in shallow-draft boats, plunder villages, and take captives for the slave trade. The Mughal governors of Bengal struggled to contain them. It wasn't until the late 17th century that the Mughal navy, under Admiral Sistani Khan, finally suppressed them. Luna: So the same geography that made Bengal wealthy — the rivers — also made it vulnerable. Lucas: Exactly. The delta is a labyrinth. And that's why the region was so hard to control. But it also meant that Bengal had a strong maritime tradition, which da Conti noted. Lucas: I think what I love about da Conti is that he's not a famous name like Marco Polo or Ibn Battuta, but he gives us this grounded, practical account. He measures distances, describes crops, notes prices. He tells us that in Bengal, a chicken cost about three small coins — that's a real economic data point. Luna: It makes history feel tangible, like you could walk into that market. Lucas: Exactly. And he mentions that the people of Bengal wore very little clothing because of the heat, but that the rich adorned themselves with jewels. He says the men wore a single cloth around the waist, and the women wore a cloth that left the upper body bare. That's consistent with later Mughal paintings. Lucas: He also describes the sport of elephant fighting, which was a royal spectacle. And he says that the Sultan kept a thousand elephants for war and display. That's a massive number — the Mughal emperors later kept about a hundred war elephants. Luna: A thousand elephants — that's insane. But it shows the scale of the Sultanate's resources. Lucas: Exactly. And da Conti's account is also one of the earliest to mention the betel leaf, which he says the locals chewed constantly, staining their teeth red. He tried it himself and said it warmed the stomach. Lucas: So when we think of the Silk Road, we usually imagine camel caravans crossing Central Asia. But there was a maritime Silk Road too, and Bengal was one of its most important nodes. The Bay of Bengal was like the Mediterranean of the East. Luna: And yet, Bengal's role in global medieval trade is often forgotten. It's always the Middle East or China. Lucas: That's why we wanted to do this episode. Bengal wasn't just a passive recipient of outside influences — it exported its culture too. You can see Bengal's influence in the temple architecture of Myanmar and Thailand. The curved, sloping roofs of the pagodas in Bagan and Ayutthaya have been traced back to the Bengali chala style. Lucas: And Bengal's textiles were so prized that in 15th-century Egypt, Mamluk sultans wore robes made of Bengali fabric. There's a letter from a Mamluk sultan to the Bengal sultan, thanking him for a gift of cloth. Luna: That's a direct line of connection — from the courts of Cairo to the weavers of Dhaka. Lucas: Exactly. So when we think of globalization, it didn't start with the Europeans. It was already happening, and Bengal was at the heart of it.