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Difino
| • | Gaur, or Laknauti is a ruined city, in the Malda district of West Bengal, India, on the west bank of the Ganges 40 km downstream from Rajmahal. It is said to have been founded by Lakshman, and its most ancient name was Lakshmanavati, corrupted into Lakhnauti. Its known history begins with its conquest in 1198 by the Mahommedans, who retained it as the chief seat of their power in Bengal for more than three centuries. When the Afghan kings of Bengal established their independence, they transferred their seat of government (about 1350) to Pandua (qv.), also in Malda district, and to build their new capital they plundered Gaur of every monument that could be removed. When Pandua was in its turn deserted (1453), Gaur once more became the capital under the name of Jannatabad; it remained so as long as the Mahommedan kings retained their independence. In 1564 Sulaiman Kirani, a Pathan adventurer, abandoned it for Tanda, a place somewhat nearer the Ganges. Gaur was sacked by Sher Shah in 1539, and was occupied by Akbars general in 1575, when Daud Shah, the last of the Afghan dynasty, refused to pay homage to the Mughal emperor. This occupation was followed by an outbreak of the plague, which completed the downfall of the city, and since then it has been little better than a heap of ruins, almost overgrown with jungle.
The city in its prime measured 7 1/8 m. from north to south, with a breadth of 1 to 2 m. With suburbs it covered an area of 20 to 30 sq. m., and in the 16th century the Portuguese historian Faria y Sousa described it as containing 1,200,000 inhabitants. The ramparts of this walled city, which was surrounded by extensive suburbs, still exist; they were works of vast labor, and were on the average about 40 ft. high, and 180 to 200 ft. thick at the base. The facing of masonry and the buildings with which they were covered have now disappeared, and the embankments themselves are overgrown with dense jungle. The western side of the city was washed by the Ganges, and within the space enclosed by these embankments and the river stood the city of Gaur proper, with the fort containing the palace in its south-west corner. Radiating north, south and east from the city, other embankments are to be traced running through the suburbs and extending in certain directions
Source: [wikipedia: gaur, west bengal]
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