page_title: Shahbag
section_title: Culture
hierarchical_section_title: Shahbag / Culture
caption_attribution_description: English: An integral part of Pohela Boishakh. Mongol Shobhajatra, a traditional colourful procession organised by the students of the Faculty of Fine Arts (Charukala) of Dhaka University.
context_page_description: Shahbag or Shahbagh is a major neighbourhood and a police precinct or thana in Dhaka, the capital and largest city of Bangladesh. It is also a major public transport hub. It is a junction between two contrasting sections of the city—Old Dhaka and New Dhaka—which lie, respectively, to its south and north. Developed in the 17th century during Mughal rule in Bengal, when Old Dhaka was the provincial capital and a centre of the flourishing muslin industry, it came to neglect and decay in early 19th century. In the mid-19th century, the Shahbag area was developed as New Dhaka became a provincial centre of the British Raj, ending a century of decline brought on by the passing of Mughal rule.
  Shahbag is the location of the nation's leading educational and public institutions, including the University of Dhaka, the oldest and largest public university in Bangladesh, Dhaka Medical College, the largest medical college in the country, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, and the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, the largest public university for technological studies in the country. Shahbag hosts many street markets and bazaars.
context_section_description: Shahbag is populated by mostly teachers and students, and its civic life is dominated by the activities of its academic institutions.  Its commercial life too reflects its occupants' intellectual and cultural pursuits.  Among its best known markets is the country's largest second-hand, rare, and antiquarian book-market, consisting of Nilkhet-Babupura Hawkers Market, a street market, and Aziz Supermarket, an indoor bazaar. Shahbag is also home to the largest flower market (a street side open air bazaar) in the country, which is located at Shahbag Intersection, as well as the largest pet market in the country, the Katabon Market. In addition, Elephant Road features a large shoe market and, Nilkhet-Babupura, a large market for bedding accessories.
  Shahbag's numerous ponds, palaces and gardens have inspired the work of artists, including poet Buddhadeva Bose, singer Protiva Bose, writer-chronicler Hakim Habibur Rahman, and two Urdu poets of 19th-century Dhaka, Obaidullah Suhrawardy and Abdul Gafoor Nassakh.
  Shahbag was at the centre of the cultural and political activities associated with the Language movement of 1952, which resulted in the founding here of the Bangla Academy, a national academy for promoting the Bengali language. The first formal art school in Dhaka – the Dhaka Art College (now Faculty of Fine Arts) – was founded in Shahbag by Zainul Abedin in 1948. Later, Mazharul Islam, the pioneer of modern architecture in Bangladesh, designed the art college as one of his early projects.  In the 1970s, Jiraz Art Gallery opened as the first commercial art wing in the Shahbag area. Other cultural landmarks in the area include
  the Bangladesh National Museum, the National Public Library, and the Dhaka University Mosque and Cemetery, containing the graves of Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet, of painters Zainul Abedin and Quamrul Hassan, and of the teachers killed by Pakistani forces during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.
  The Shahbag area has a rich religious history.  In the late 1920s, Sri Anandamoyi Ma, the noted Hindu ascetic, also known as the Mother of Shahbag, built her ashram near Ramna Kali Mandir, or the Temple of Kali, at Ramna.  Her presence in Dhaka owed directly to Shahbag, for her husband, Ramani Mohan Chakrabarti, had accepted the position of caretaker of Shahbag gardens a few years earlier.  In 1971 the Temple of Kali was destroyed by the Pakistani Army in the Liberation War of Bangladesh. A well-known local Muslim saint of the early 20th century was Syed Abdur Rahim, supervisor of the dairy farm established by Khwaja Salimullah, the Nawab of Dhaka, at Paribag.  Known as the Shah Shahib of Paribag, Abdur Rahim had his khanqah (Persian: خانگاه, spiritual retreat) here; his tomb lies at the same location today. Katabon Mosque, an important centre for Muslim missionaries in Bangladesh, is located in Shahbag as well. In addition, the only Sikh Gurdwara in Dhaka stands next to the Institute of Modern Languages in Shahbag.
  Since 1875, the Shahbag gardens have hosted a famous fair celebrating the Gregorian New Year and containing exhibits of agricultural and industrial items, as well as those of animals and birds.  In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the gardens were the private property of the Nawab of Dhaka, and, although a portion of the gardens had been donated to Dhaka University in 1918, ordinary citizens could enter the main gardens only during the fair. In 1921, at the request of the Nawab's daughter, Paribanu, the organisers of the fair set aside one day during which only women were admitted to the fair, a tradition that has continued down to the present.  Today, the fair features dance recitals by girls, Jatra (a native form of folk theater), putul naach (puppet shows), magic shows and Bioscope shows. Historically, Shahbag was also the main venue in Dhaka for other recreational sports like Boli Khela (wrestling) and horse racing.
  The Basanta Utsab (Festival of Spring) takes place every 14 February—the first day of spring, according to the reformed Bangladeshi calendar. Basanta Utsab has b
caption: Mangal Shobhajatra on Pohela Baishakh
exif: {"Image Make": "Nokia", "Image Model": "Nokia 800", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Windows Phone 7.5", "Image Artist": "Nahid Sultan", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Rating": "0", "Image Tag 0x4749": "0", "Image Copyright": "Attribution:\u00a9 Nahid Sultan; CC-BY-SA 4.0", "Image ExifOffset": "2292", "Image GPSInfo": "4648", "Image XPAuthor": "Nahid Sultan", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4750", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "24700", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/1233", "EXIF FNumber": "11/5", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:04:14 09:15:46", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:04:14 09:15:46", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "4594", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "9C9985E67F2A600EFC953DC949F83E1A", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}