Habashi Rule in Bengal

[Saiful Islam]

Can someone enlighten me on Habshi period in Bengal? Bit more than what something like Wikipedia has to offer.

Apologies if this is not relevant to defence.

@asad71 & others.

 

[TopCat]

@bluesky

 

[Al-zakir]

Can someone enlighten me on Habshi period in Bengal? Bit more than what something like Wikipedia has to offer.

Apologies if this is not relevant to defence.

@asad71 & others.

I'm also interested. How come we do not about that period? It's seems it was cut out from history book.

 

[Saiful Islam]

I'm also interested. How come we do not about that period? It's seems it was cut out from history book.

This is also what I was thinking. The Ethiopians made fine soldiers and rulers.

Also after searching other forums, someone mentioned Bengal was their only sizeable kingdom.

 

[Exiled_Soldier]

You can read from Banglapedia. During long stable rule of Ilias Shah dynasty, they brought lots of Habshi slaves. The Habshis became very powerful in their courts. The last Ilias Shah ruler, Fateh Shah was killed by his Habshi slave Barbak and who then became the Sultan/ruler. Their rule lasted for 6 years by 4 Sultan. All 4 were killed. It was a time of anarchy. The elite people removed and killed the last ruler Mujaffar Shah through mass rebellion leading by Mujaffar Shah's minister Hussain Shah. Then started the rule Hossain Sahi dynasty.

http://bn.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=ইতিহাস

 

[TopCat]

You can read from Banglapedia. During long stable rule of Ilias Shah dynasty, they brought lots of Habshi slaves. The Habshis became very powerful in their courts. The last Ilias Shah ruler, Fateh Shah was killed by his Habshi slave Barbak and who then became the Sultan/ruler. Their rule lasted for 6 years by 4 Sultan. All 4 were killed. It was a time of anarchy. The elite people removed and killed the last ruler Mujaffar Shah through mass rebellion leading by Mujaffar Shah's minister Hussain Shah. Then started the rule Hossain Sahi dynasty.

http://bn.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=ইতিহাস

Barbak means idiot in Bangla. My grand pa used to revoke people with that name. Did it come from this Barbak the slave?

 

[bluesky]

You can read from Banglapedia. During long stable rule of Ilias Shah dynasty, they brought lots of Habshi slaves. The Habshis became very powerful in their courts. The last Ilias Shah ruler, Fateh Shah was killed by his Habshi slave Barbak and who then became the Sultan/ruler. Their rule lasted for 6 years by 4 Sultan. All 4 were killed. It was a time of anarchy. The elite people removed and killed the last ruler Mujaffar Shah through mass rebellion leading by Mujaffar Shah's minister Hussain Shah. Then started the rule Hossain Sahi dynasty.

http://bn.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=ইতিহাস

They were not exactly slaves. The Muslim Habshis from Ethiopia, Eritrea and the likes were enlisted in the military and civil service of Gaur Sultanate. The country was not yet named Bengal. The Habshis were educated and worked in many administrative and military posts. Ethiopeans had also moved to many other countries under the Muslim rulers of that period. Similarly, they worked for the govt in those countries, as well.

There were 8,000 of them in Bengal. They executed a palace coup, Barbak Shahzada, an eunuch and the chief of Palace Guards, killed Jalal al-Din Fateh Shah, and usurped the throne in 1487 CE. He was subsequently killed by Malik Andil, a military general, who took over the throne as Saif al-Din Firuz Shah in 1488 CE. This dynasty ruled Bengal until 1493 CE.

Firuz Shah was followed by his son Qutb al-Din Mahmud Shah in 1490 CE. The latter was followed by Shams al-Din Muzaffar Shah 1490-1493 CE. Muzaffar Shah was killed in a rebellion organized by his (Arab) PM Syed Hussain Shah in 1493 CE. This ended the Habshi dynasty in Bengal.

 

[bluesky]

I expected @Saiful Islam to be interested about the Habshi dynasty in Bengal. But, I find no response from him or others.

 

[Saiful Islam]

I expected @Saiful Islam to be interested about the Habshi dynasty in Bengal. But, I find no response from him or others.

I'm reading, don't worry. I'm not always on here like before, but keep posting.

Barbak means idiot in Bangla. My grand pa used to revoke people with that name. Did it come from this Barbak the slave?

Barbak? Do you not mean Be-bat?

 

[bluesky]

Barbak? Do you not mean Be-bat?

Burbak is the word meaning a fool in Urdu/Hindi. Barbak is a name. These sound similar, but have different meanings. Anyway, Habshi rule continued until an Arab usurper, named Syed Hussain Shah overthrew Sultan Muzaffar Shah and took over the throne of Bengal. Most of the Habshis were then banished to south India.

However, I believe many remained in Bengal. As a result of this, many of us look more Negroid with curled hair, darker skin and negroid facial feature than normal Bangali Muslims. In any case, we are a mixed blooded race of people, and this mixing started in the historical times and keeps on continuing.

 

[third eye]

Can someone enlighten me on Habshi period in Bengal? Bit more than what something like Wikipedia has to offer.

Apologies if this is not relevant to defence.

@asad71 & others.

The brief reign of the Habshi dynasty of Bengal consisted of four rulers over a six-year period:

Ghiyath al-Din Barbak Shah 1487-1488 CE
Saif al-Din Firuz Shah 1488-1490 CE
Qutb al-Din Mahmud Shah 1490 CE
Shams al-Din Muzaffar Shah 1490-1493 CE

The opening ruler, Barbak Shah held power for a brief stint only lasting 3-6 months. He was noted to be an insecure and sometimes paranoid personality, often alienating himself from most of his subjects including many of the other Abyssinians. His paranoid delusions sometimes drove him to orchestrate executions of any potential rivals similar to the early days that Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq. Furthermore, he only surrounded himself with the most loyal cohorts and installed his administrators accordingly, given that he viewed faithfulness as taking precedence over competence. Subsequently, Barbak Shahs administration was known to have the least support of his subjects. Another Abyssinian noble by the name of Malik Andil exploited this deterioration of civic allegiance and rallied together with the loyalists of the previous regime, assassinating Barbak Shah and claiming the throne under the title Saif al-Din Firuz Shah in 1488 CE.

Firuz Shah ascended into power with full support of the local nobility, both Ashrafs and Habshis. Firsthand accounts by arab historians give the reputation upon Firuz Shah as the greatest of all four Habshi sultans of Bengal. He was a bold and charismatic leader, while showing secular restraint and generosity towards Muslims and non-Muslims alike. He awarded living wages to artists and architects and further bolstered his support by distributing rupees among the poor and oppressed Namasudra(low caste) and Dalit populace. As a testament of his considerable patronage of the artistic and cultural sectors, many mosques, towers and inscriptions survive today.

The Firuz Minar, located in Gaur, West Bengal endures as one most revered monuments in of all of Bengal. It stands 26 meters tall with a complex spiral staircase of 73 steps; it is a lasting imprint of the short-lived Ethiopian presence in Bengal.

The son of Firuz Shah, Mahmud Shah took power in 1490 CE along with his top advisor, another Abyssinian named Habash Khan. Not long after their emergence into leadership was a successful coup staged by a rival faction under the auspices of an Abyssinian named Sidi Badr Diwana. The rebel leader executed Mahmud Shah and his entire cabinet, capturing the sultanate under the title Shams al-Din Muzaffar Shah. In spite of its rather violent beginnings, for the next three years Muzaffar Shah lead an extension of the cultural patronage of Firuz Shah, developing a sophisticated currency coinage system and the construction of a famous mosque built in 1491 CE. During the last few months of his reign the anti-Abyssinian sentiment of the upper caste Hindus and the Ashrafs was reaching a climax. Finally, the last Habshi Sultan was killed under the orchestration of the Ashraf, Hussain Shah, with the assistance of the Hindu paiks or military guards. He subsequently cleansed the administration of the Abyssinian nobles, expelling them to the Deccan.

Thus, the Habshi rule of Bengal ended as it began.

 

[kenyannoobie]

Burbak is the word meaning a fool in Urdu/Hindi. Barbak is a name. These sound similar, but have different meanings. Anyway, Habshi rule continued until an Arab usurper, named Syed Hussain Shah overthrew Sultan Muzaffar Shah and took over the throne of Bengal. Most of the Habshis were then banished to south India.

However, I believe many remained in Bengal. As a result of this, many of us look more Negroid with curled hair, darker skin and negroid facial feature than normal Bangali Muslims. In any case, we are a mixed blooded race of people, and this mixing started in the historical times and keeps on continuing.

Idk much but I do know the neighbouring Kuki speakers in Upper Burma were Africoid;their Tibeto Burmese language still contains much African tonal features.

"Here are some excerpts The degrees of African-ness and Chinese-ness are evaluated, and African-style features arefound to be lurking throughout the Qiangic family. Similarities of word structure and wordlength between African and Qiangic languages are held responsible for the similarities.....
A close inspection of the tone system of the Mianchi dialectof Southern Qiang (SQ) shows that its tone system behaves more like a prototypical Africanlanguage than it does like Chinese, even though the tone system arose under heavy influence......
As this paper was nearing completion, I was made aware of Hyman (2007 [forthcoming]),in which African tonal features are reported in Kuki-Thaadow, another Tibeto-Burman language...."
http://http//www.academia.edu/232193/_African_tone_in_the_Sinosphere

I remember Nadiya Hussein last year. People couldn't believe there were such African looking Bangladeshis.

There must have been cultural and dna exchange with Upper Burmese.

Many of whom are African both linguistically and phenotypically.

I was surprised by these pix.

Shocked,actually!

I doubt recent Habashi slaves are the source of your features. For example,I also know Tamil is similar to W African languages indicating a long ago migration.

 

[bluesky]

I remember Nadiya Hussein last year. People couldn't believe there were such African looking Bangladeshis.

Nadiya Hussein of Bangladesh became very famous baker when she prepared a Birthday Cake for the British Queen last year. She is quite a beautiful woman. However, if she resembles an African is difficult to tell, specially when she is not showing her hair. In any case, there have been African migration since pre-historical times in the sub-continent. You can see these people in the Makran shore of Pakistan. They are called Makrani and they seemed to me almost without mixing with other locals.

In case of Bengal, our very native people, regardless of their religion today, are also partly Negroid. In his history book, "Bangalar Itihash" (History of Bangalah), Rakhaldas Bannerjy stated something like this, "the Mongols came from north, the Dravidians from south and the Negroid people came from Chota Nagpur (now in India). History does not speak of the process how these three groups intermixed with each other. Was it through warfare, or through peaceful co-existence and worshiping the same Gods at the same temples, no one really knows. But, we can attest that they intermixed with each other during the course of history".

Rakhaldas was a great historian, under whose guidance Moenjodaro and Harappa civilizations were discovered.

 

[Kandari-Hushiyaar]

Can someone enlighten me on Habshi period in Bengal? Bit more than what something like Wikipedia has to offer.

Apologies if this is not relevant to defence.

@asad71 & others.

When we think about Bengali Sultans we think about Pathan Sultans. This is a gross mistake. Basically Bengali sultans were diverse in race from Turkish to Habshi, Arab to Pathan or even Local .

Idk much but I do know the neighbouring Kuki speakers in Upper Burma were Africoid;their Tibeto Burmese language still contains much African tonal features.

"Here are some excerpts The degrees of African-ness and Chinese-ness are evaluated, and African-style features arefound to be lurking throughout the Qiangic family. Similarities of word structure and wordlength between African and Qiangic languages are held responsible for the similarities.....
A close inspection of the tone system of the Mianchi dialectof Southern Qiang (SQ) shows that its tone system behaves more like a prototypical Africanlanguage than it does like Chinese, even though the tone system arose under heavy influence......
As this paper was nearing completion, I was made aware of Hyman (2007 [forthcoming]),in which African tonal features are reported in Kuki-Thaadow, another Tibeto-Burman language...."
http://http//www.academia.edu/232193/_African_tone_in_the_Sinosphere

I remember Nadiya Hussein last year. People couldn't believe there were such African looking Bangladeshis.

View attachment 412510

There must have been cultural and dna exchange with Upper Burmese.


View attachment 412511

Many of whom are African both linguistically and phenotypically.


View attachment 412512

I was surprised by these pix.
View attachment 412513

Shocked,actually!

View attachment 412514

I doubt recent Habashi slaves are the source of your features. For example,I also know Tamil is similar to W African languages indicating a long ago migration.

A major portion of the bengali race has Australoid blood. Our dark skin derives from the mixture of Dravidian and Australoid people which is called Nishada. They lived here before white skinned Aryans, Tibbetians and Semites entered in Bengal.

 

[bluesky]

"The Veddahs, Malavedahs, Irulas and Sholagas are the true representatives of Proto-Australoids. The Bhils, Kols, Badagas, Korwas, Kharwars, Mundas, Bhumjis and Malpaharis of the highlands of Central India and the Chenchus, Kurumbas, Malayans and Yeruvas of South India may all be treated as Proto-Australoids".

The above is a citatation on the Australoids in the Indian sub-continent of which the present-day Bangladesh is also a part. Pictures show these people are not pure blooded Negros but resemble them. These people spread also to Bengal from Chota Nagpur of Central India, as was described by the great Historian Rakhaldas Bannerjy and intermixed with the Mongoloids and Dravidians. He termed them Negroid (নিগ্রোজাতীয়), but not pure Negro. He said these Negroid people migrated from Chota Nagpur.