Page:Twelve men of Bengal in the nineteenth century (1910).djvu/200

174 up for himself as a merchant there, his wide knowledge of the world and of men enabling him to meet with immediate success. Sending for his father and brother from Cashmir, he succeeded in establishing a prosperous business, his house and godown occupying the site of the present Collectorate offices. After his death his son and successor moved to Dacca which offered a wider and more convenient field of operations, settling in the quarter known as Begum's Bazaar. It was a time of upheaval. The old order was changing and the old families who had long held the neighbouring Zeminadries were dying out or, encumbered with debt, were being forced to relinquish their possessions. For the new man with brains, energy and capital there was a chance such as seldom offered. Zemindary after Zemindary was bought up often at a nominal price and so successful did the enterprises of the descendants of Moulvi Abdulla prove that the trading from which their prosperity had originally taken its rise was gradually abandoned. A generation, before Abdul Ghani the family had won for itself an acknowledged place among the more important Zemindars of the Dacca district.

It was not, however, until the time of Khawja Alimulla, father of Abdul Ghani, that the family became known outside merely local limits. He was one of the best types of the rising man of that generation. Endowed with great business capacity