A Fort Born From Imperial Ambition
Few structures in South Asia carry as much unresolved history as Lalbagh Fort. Sitting in the old city of Dhaka, the fort was never finished, and that incompleteness is not a flaw but the very thing that makes it compelling. Its original name was Fort Aurangabad, and its story begins in 1678 when Prince Muhammad Azam Shah, the third son of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, began construction during his tenure as viceroy of Bengal. He stayed in Bengal for just fifteen months before his father recalled him to assist in the wars against the Marathas. The fort he left behind would never be completed.
The name Lalbagh, meaning Red Garden, came later, in 1844, when the area was formally renamed from Aurangabad. The reddish and pinkish hues of the Mughal brickwork gave the neighbourhood, and eventually the fort, its enduring identity.
Shaista Khan and the Shadow of Grief
After Prince Azam’s departure, Shaista Khan, the new Subahdar of Mughal Bengal, took charge of the construction. Shaista Khan was one of the most powerful and capable administrators the Mughals ever posted to Bengal. Under his watch, Dhaka flourished as a trading city, and the province became, in Aurangzeb’s own words, the Paradise of Nations. Bengal was the economic engine of the empire, producing fine muslin, silk, and agricultural wealth that funded Mughal campaigns across the subcontinent.
But in 1684, Shaista Khan’s daughter, Iran Dukht, known affectionately as Pari Bibi (Fairy Lady), died inside the fort complex. She was reportedly engaged to Prince Azam at the time of her death. Shaista Khan, grief-stricken and convinced the fort carried bad omen, halted construction entirely. He had Pari Bibi buried within the fort walls, and the structure was never resumed. When the Mughal capital of Bengal was later shifted from Dhaka to Murshidabad, the fort fell into abandonment.
The Architecture of an Incomplete Dream
What survives today is a layered complex of three principal buildings arranged in a single east-west line, connected by a water channel with fountains at regular intervals. The three structures are the Diwan-i-Aam (the governor’s audience hall and residence), the Tomb of Pari Bibi, and a three-domed mosque to the west. Between them, lawns, fountains, and a large square water tank (roughly 72 metres on each side) fill the grounds.
The Diwan-i-Aam is a two-story building measuring approximately 32 by 8 metres externally. It served as the official residence of the Mughal governor of Bengal and contains a Hammamkhana, or bathhouse, in its southern section. Excavations carried out between 1994 and 2009 by the Department of Archaeology of Bangladesh revealed a sophisticated underground heating system beneath the Hammamkhana, where terracotta pipes specially manufactured for the purpose carried both hot and cold water to the bathhouse above. Burn marks in the underground chamber confirmed that fire was used to heat the water. It is one of only seven such Hammamkhana still traceable in Bangladesh’s heritage record.
The Tomb of Pari Bibi stands at the centre of the complex. A square central chamber holds her remains beneath a false octagonal dome, wrapped in brass plate. The entire interior is lined with white marble, a material that was expensive and rare in Bengal at the time, reflecting the depth of Shaista Khan’s grief and his daughter’s status. Eight smaller rooms surround the central chamber.
The mosque, though modest in size relative to the overall site, has three domes and a water tank for ablutions at its front. Its oblong plan measures roughly 20 by 10 metres externally. Several pieces of Mughal artillery remain on the grounds, a reminder that this was a fortified military installation as much as a residential palace.
Legends, Tunnels, and Disputed Identities
Lalbagh Fort has accumulated a considerable body of legend over the centuries. The tunnels within the fort walls are now sealed, but oral tradition holds that two of them once led beneath the Buriganga River to the now-ruined Zinzira Fort on the opposite bank. Another passage was reportedly built as a maze, and it is said that soldiers fleeing after the Sepoy Uprising of 1857 became lost within it.
The identity of Pari Bibi herself remains a subject of scholarly debate. Some researchers argue she was an Ahom princess brought to Dhaka following a military expedition into the northeastern territories near the Garo Hills. According to this account, she was converted to Islam and betrothed to Prince Azam. The more widely accepted view, and the one that has settled into popular memory, is that she was simply Shaista Khan’s beloved daughter, and that her death broke the will of one of the most powerful men in Mughal Bengal.
Archaeologists have also determined that the current fort represents only about half of what Prince Azam originally planned. Excavations revealed that the main fort walls once extended further eastward, beneath what is now Shaista Khan Road. The southeastern gate, adjacent to the Lalbagh Shahi Masjid, appears to have been intended as a central gate in a much larger complex. The eastern half, likely designed for administrative use, was either never built or has long since disappeared.
Lalbagh Fort Today
The fort is now one of the most visited historical sites in Dhaka, drawing both local visitors and international tourists who come to understand the city’s Mughal past. The Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation has funded restoration work on parts of the complex, and the Department of Archaeology of Bangladesh continues to conduct excavations that periodically reveal new details about the original structure.
Once situated directly beside the Buriganga River, the fort now sits at a distance from the water as the river has retreated over centuries. European painters documented the fort during the 18th and 19th centuries, and those paintings remain some of the earliest visual records of Dhaka’s built environment. Lalbagh Fort is widely regarded as one of the most significant surviving symbols of Mughal rule in Bengal, a province that, at its peak, was among the wealthiest and most productive in the entire empire.
For anyone visiting Dhaka, the fort offers something that few heritage sites can: a place where the ambition of an empire, the grief of a father, and the weight of three centuries of history all occupy the same few acres of ground.
Image: Wikimedia Commons