A historical place Ahsan manjil

In mughal period, there was a garden house of Sheikh Enayet Ullah, the landowner of Jamalpur porgona (district), in this place. Sheikh Enayet Ullah was a very pleasant person. He acquires a very big area in Kumartuli and integrated in his garden house. Here he built a beautiful palace and named it “Rangmahal”. He used to enjoy here keeping beautiful girls collecting from the country and abroad.

covering them with good-looking dresses and expensive ornaments. There is a saying that, the foujdar of Dhaka (representative of mughal emperor) in that time was attracted to one of the striking girls among them. He invited Sheikh Enayet Ullah in a party one night and killed him in a conspiracy when he was returning home. That girl also committed suicide in anger and sorrow. There was a one doomed cemetery of Sheikh Enayet Ullah in the north-east corner of the palace yard, which was ruined in the beginning of 20th century.

Most likely in the period of Nawab Alibardi Khan around 1740 century, Sheikh Moti Ullah, the son of Sheikh Enayet Ullah, sold the property to the French traders. There was a French trading house beside this property. The trading house became more affluent after purchasing this property. In that time, French traders could do business here without paying any taxes by a decree from the emperor Awrangajeb.

Within 1785, the French transferred the property to a French tradesman named Mr. Champigni, and retaken it at 1801. According to Paris conformity of 1814, the French claimed all their left properties at Dhaka, and in 1827 the property was again returned to the French. For the increasing power of the English, the French was forced to left subcontinent. They decided to sell all their properties in Dhaka. So in 1830, the trading house of Kumartuli was purchased by the established landlord of Dhaka Khwaja Alimullah.

In the sunset of 7 April 1888, a great tornado hit Dhaka city because great break. Ahsan Manjil was greatly dented and abandoned. An English engineer from Kolkata arrived here to study the palace. He gave opinion that except the “Rangmahal”, all other parts of the palace have to reconstruct. So Khwaja Abdul Gani and his son Ahsanullah turned their full attention to reconstruct the palace. Both of the building was reconstructed during that time with a new design made and supervised by the local engineer Gobinda Chandra Roy.

After the loss of Khwaja Ahsanullah in 1901, the glory of Ahsan Manjil was ended. His successor couldn’t carry on the glory for the internal family quarrel. They rented different parts of the palace to tenants, who actually made it a slum. In 1952 govt. acquired the property and left in supervision of the Dhaka Nawab court. In 1985 Dhaka National Museum acquires the possessions and made it a museum.