Sylhet 7.88

Sylhet, also known as Jalalabad, is a metropolitan city in northeastern Bangladesh. It is the administrative seat of Sylhet Division. The city is located on the right bank of the Surma River in northeastern Bengal. It has a subtropical climate and lush highland terrain. The city has a population of more than half a million. Sylhet is one of Bangladesh's most important spiritual and cultural centres. It is one of the most important cities of Bangladesh, after Dhaka and Chittagong due to its importance to the country's economy. The city's dargahs, or burial sites of Muslim saints, attract several thousand devotees each year.The name of Sylhet is the anglicized form of the ancient Indo-Aryan term Srihatta. In 1303, the Sufi Muslim leader Shah Jalal conquered Sylhet by defeating the local Hindu Raja. Ibn Battuta visited Sylhet in the 14th century and saw Bengali Muslims transforming the region into an agricultural basket. Sylhet was a mint town of the Bengal Sultanate. In the 16th-century, Sylhet was controlled by the Baro-Bhuyan zamindars and became a district of the Mughal Empire. British rule began in the 18th century under the administration of the East India Company. With its ancient seafaring tradition, Sylhet became a key source of lascars in the British Empire. The Sylhet municipal board was established in 1867. Originally part of the Bengal Presidency and later Eastern Bengal and Assam; the town was part of Colonial Assam between 1874 and 1947, when following a referendum and the partition of British India, it became part of East Bengal. The Sylhet City Corporation was constituted in 2001. The Government of Bangladesh designated Sylhet a metropolitan area in 2009.