D'Hubert, Thibaut

Sylhet Nagari (Nāgarī) is a script used to write a form of the premodern Bengali literary idiom used in the Sylhet region of present-day northeastern Bangladesh. It is also known as Siletī Nāgarī, Jalālābādī Nāgarī, Phul Nāgarī, Musalmānī Nāgarī, and sometimes assimilated to Kai…

Sayyid Sulṭān (fl. 1040–55/1630–45) was among the first Bengali Muslim authors to contribute to the spread of the teachings of Islam to the rural populations of eastern Bengal. He composed his epic Nabīvaṃsha (“The Prophet’s lineage”, composed c. 1040–55/1630–45) as a counter to…

Ālāol (ʿAlāwal in Arabic script, fl. 1061–82/1651–71), one of the most prolific authors of premodern Bengali literature, was born in central Bengal, in the Afghan chiefdom of Fatiḥābād, which became part of the Mughal empire in about 1019/1610. ʿAlāwal may be an abridged and cor…

Ḥayāt Maḥmūd (fl. 1135–72/1723–59) was a Bengali author who worked as a judge (qāḍī) and lived his entire life in the region of Ghoraghat, in northwestern Bengal. The main events of his biography can be gathered from evidence in his texts, information handed down by his descenda…

ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm (c. 1008–80/1600–70) was born in the village of Bābūpūr, in the kingdom of Bhulua, in present-day southeastern Bangladesh. With Ālāol (fl. 1061–82/1651–71), he was one of the most prolific writers of premodern Bengali literature. We have little material with which …

Dobhāshī denotes an idiom characteristic of a trend of Bengali Muslim literature that developed in the second half of the twelfth/eighteenth century and lasted until the first decades of the twentieth. Dobhāshī means literally “(made) of two languages,” referring to the composit…

Bengali literature developed in the northeastern part of the Indian subcontinent in about the eighth/fourteenth century, when Bengali, also called Bangla, became a literary language. After 739/1338 Bengal was an independent sultanate ruled by Turko-Afghan elites based in the urb…