Dhaka: From Mughal Outpost to Me

DHAKA: From Mughal Outpost to Metropolis is the first book that provides a pictorial history at the evolution of Dhaka's urban, social, and political fabric and architecture. It is a visual narrative of how people lived, thought, and made this great city of the East. With two hundred and eight pages of colourful photographs, the book depicts the multifaceted picture of this great city. Like many other cities of the developing world, Dhaka is a fast-growing metropolis of nearly nine million people, a large proportion of them living in poor, unsanitary conditions. Against this background are the sharply contrasting signs of modernism and affluence: high-rise buildings, automobiles, computers. Dhaka's four-hundred-year history is a collage of the legacy of the great empires, the Mughal and the British, and of the many foreign interlopers who came to this land spreading their religion or seeking their fortune. After a brief introduction, the pictorial chapters wonder through historic Sonargaon, old Dhaka, Sher-e-Banglanagar, and suburban Dhaka. Dhaka's attractive bazaars, colourful rickshaws, finely decorated mosques, impressive monuments, traditional lifestyles in the old town and on the banks of the Buriganga river, all appear in beautiful colour photographs, printed on high quality paper, to provide a unique portrait of the city and its people.