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Shafiqul Alam: Modern Chittagong was actually built on fear : the overwhelming fear that the Arakans will conquer this port city once again. The old Chitragong -- the famous Porto Grande that the Portuguese traders wrote about -- was built on the southern side of the Karnaphuli river. It was located somewhere near the Deyang hills, near the vicinity of the Marine Academy, the Pakistanis built, and the Kafco fertiliser factory.

Legends has it that a 18-year old Bujurga Umid Khan who led the reconquest of Chittagong region on January 27, 1666, from the Arakans was petrified with a reprisal from the Arakan kings based at Mrak U that he announced the relocation of the port city to the northern side of the river. His brilliant general Ibne Hossain, who actually was the main architect of the victory, did not like the idea because modern Chittagong at that were some cluster of villages nestled with forests and small hills.

So, Umid Khan led tge foundation of modern Chittagong at around Andarkilla. The Andarkilla mosque is the first significant Mughal edifices and a new city was built around this place. Umid Khan, the eldest son of Shaesta Khan, the governor of Subah Bangla, remained as the governor of Chittagong for two more years -- always fearful that the ferocious Arakans, allied with the Prtuguese traders, would make an attempt to reclaim the prized possesion they controlled between 1580 and 1666.

But Bangladesh -- and the then Mughal kings and Nawabs of Murshidabad -- were lukcy that the Arakanese themselves became increasingly worried about an attack from the Burmese kings in central Myanmar. After terrorising much of the Bengal coastal and central region for about 200 years, the Catholic Portuguese found it tough to compete with the Protestant and increasingly sophisticated British and Dutch traders. They left the scene quietly.

And in the meantime, just 125 years after they brutally killed Shah Suja and his family and then lost Chittagong, the Arakan kingdom was conquered by the Bamar Burmese kings. It triggered the one of the biggest refugee crisis in the late 18th century. The Arakans lost their indepedendence forever. They could never mount a challenge to reclaim Chittagong. The Bengal delta or modern Bangladesh never had to worry like Umid Khan over the future of Chittagong. What we've got ever since is wave after wave of refugee crisis.