Page:The Musnud of Murshidabad (1704 - 1904).djvu/29



Mohamedan sovereignty in Bengal, of which Murshidabad had not yet become the capital, was established about the year 1203, when Luknowti or Lakshanavati, known as Gour, a large city on the left bank of the Ganges, twenty-five miles south of Maldah, was the seat of Government. Lakshman Sen, the Hindu King of Bengal, whose capital was at Navadwip, had been told by his Court astrologers, that the kingdom would be subjucated by the Turks. The ajanulambitabahu (arms reaching the knees) of Bukhtiar Khiliji, the grandee of Ghor, who under the mandate of Kuttubuddeen, appeared before the gates of the Hindu capital with but seventeen horsemen, answered the description given by the Brahmins of the Mussulman Conquerer of Bengal. Through the back door of the palace, the king, whose panic-striken courtiers had already abandoned him, fled unmolested and undetected to Bikrampore, in the eastern parts of the kingdom and his capital fell into Moslem hands without a struggle. The banner of Islam then waved from the citadel of Navadwip. It was subsequently hoisted at Gour. During five long centuries, from the Mahomedan conquest of Bengal by Bukhtiar Khiliji in 1203, to the time of the imperial prince, Azeem Oshan, when the seat of Mahomedan Government