Chittagong: The Restless Port Where Empires, Hills, and the Sea Collided

At the southeastern edge of Bengal, where the hills of the Chittagong Hill Tracts meet the Bay of Bengal, lies Chattogram — known for most of its history as Chittagong. This is a city shaped by water, trade, and repeated conquests. Chittagong’s importance stretches back many centuries. It was a natural harbor and a gateway between the Bengal delta and the maritime world of Southeast Asia. Arab and Persian traders mentioned it in medieval accounts. In the 15th and 16th centuries it became a contested prize between the Bengal sultans, the Arakanese kingdom to the southeast, and later the Mughals and the Portuguese. The Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century and established a presence in Chittagong. They were followed by other European traders. For a time the city was a wild frontier zone where Portuguese adventurers, Arakanese raiders, and local chieftains competed for control. The Arakanese kingdom, centered in Mrauk-U, often dominated the region and used Chittagong as a base for raids into Bengal proper. The famous Magh raids — slave-taking expeditions that terrorized the coastal areas — are part of the dark memory of this period. In 1666 the Mughal general Shaista Khan finally conquered Chittagong from the Arakanese and brought it firmly under Mughal control. The city became an important Mughal port, though it never achieved the same administrative centrality as Dhaka or Murshidabad. Its character remained more cosmopolitan and turbulent than the riverine cities of central Bengal. The mix of Bengali, Arakanese, Portuguese, and later British influences created a distinctive cultural texture. The physical landscape of Chittagong reflects this layered history. The old port area, the hills rising behind the city, the Buddhist and Hindu temples alongside mosques and churches — all speak of multiple communities living in close proximity. The famous shrine of Shah Amanat and the older shrine of Bayazid Bostami (with its legendary association with a saint and a cat) are important pilgrimage sites. The city’s strategic location made it a target during the Second World War as well; it was bombed by the Japanese. In the 19th and early 20th centuries Chittagong became a center of anti-colonial activity. The Chittagong Armoury Raid of 1930, led by Surya Sen and other revolutionaries, was one of the most dramatic actions against British rule. The city’s hills and proximity to the sea made it a natural base for such movements. Today Chittagong (Chattogram) is Bangladesh’s second-largest city and its main port. The old colonial and pre-colonial layers are still visible beneath the modern commercial bustle. The ship-breaking yards on the outskirts are a stark reminder of global economic flows — ships built elsewhere come here to be dismantled by hand. The hills of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, home to diverse indigenous communities, remain a region of complex politics and cultural richness. Chittagong’s story is one of perpetual motion. While the cities of central Bengal rose and fell with the shifting rivers, Chittagong’s fate was tied to the sea and to the hills. It was always a place of arrival and departure, of trade and raid, of multiple languages and faiths. Its history is less about a single golden age and more about continuous adaptation to whatever power controlled the Bay of Bengal and the trade routes. In that sense Chittagong represents a different face of Bengal — not the settled agricultural heartland of the delta, but the restless maritime frontier. The patterns here are of connection and conflict across the water, of communities that learned to survive between empires. The city has been Bengali, Arakanese, Portuguese, Mughal, British, and now Bangladeshi. Through all these changes something of its old character — a certain toughness, a cosmopolitan edge, a sense of being at the edge of things — has persisted. To walk through the old parts of Chittagong is to feel the weight of all these layers. The sea still brings ships. The hills still watch from above. The city continues its ancient role as a place where Bengal meets the wider world, sometimes violently, sometimes profitably, always in motion. That, perhaps, is the most enduring pattern of all.