Cox's Bazar Town & History

Town

Cox's Bazar (Town), Cox's Bazar municipality, was constituted in 1869, eventually becoming a B-grade municipality in 1989. The municipality covers an area of 6.85 km². Located along the Bay of Bengal in South Eastern Bangladesh, Cox's Bazar Town is a large port and health resort. But it is famous mostly for its long natural sandy beach. The municipality covers an area of 6.85 km² with 27 Mahala and 9 wards and has a population of 51,918. Cox's Bazar is connected by road and air with Chittagong.

History

The greater Chittagong area, including Cox's Bazar, was under the rule of Arakan kings from the early 9th century until its conquest by the Mughals in 1666 AD. When the Mughal Prince Shah Shuja was passing through the hilly terrain of the present-day Cox’s Bazar on his way to Arakan, he was attracted to its scenic and captivating beauty. He commanded his forces to camp there. His retinue of one thousand palanquins stopped there for some time. A place named Dulahazara, meaning "one thousand palanquins," still exists in the area. After the Mughals, the place came under the control of the Tipras and the Arakanese, followed by the Portuguese and then the British.

The name Cox's Bazar/Bazaar originated from the name of a British East India Company officer, Captain Hiram Cox, who was appointed as the Superintendent of Palonki (today's Cox's Bazar) outpost. He succeeded Warren Hastings, who became the Governor of Bengal following the British East India Company Act in 1773. Cox was mobilised to deal with a century-long conflict between Arakan refugees and local Rakhine people at Palonki. The Captain had rehabilitated many refugees in the area, but had died (in 1799) before he could finish his work. To commemorate that, a market was established and named after him, called Cox's Bazar (market of Cox). Cox's Bazar then was first established in 1854 and became a municipality in 1869.

After the Sepoy Mutiny (Indian Rebellion of 1857) in 1857, the British East India Company was highly criticised and questioned on humanitarian grounds, specially for its opium trade monopoly over the Indian Sub-Continent. However, after its dissolution on 1 January 1874, all of the company's assets including its Armed Forces were acquired by the British Crown. After this historic take over, Cox's Bazar was declared a district of the Bengal Province under the British Crown.

Cox's Bazar Map from Series U542, U.S. Army Map Service, 1955

After the end of British rule in 1947, Cox's Bazar became part of East Pakistan. Captain Advocate Fazlul Karim, the first Chairman (after independence from the British) of Cox's Bazar Municipality, established the Tamarisk Forest along the beach. He wanted to attract tourists as well as to protect the beach from tidal waves (tsunami). He donated much of his father-in-law’s and his own lands as sites for constructing a Public Library and a Town Hall. He was inspired to build Cox's Bazar as a tourist spot after seeing beaches of Bombay and Karachi, and was a resort pioneers in developing Cox's Bazar as a destination. He founded a Maternity Hospital, the Stadium and the drainage system by procuring grants from the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation through correspondence. T. H. Matthews, the principal of the Dacca Engineering College (1949~1954), was a friend who had helped him in these fundraising efforts. Engineer Chandi Charan Das was the government civil engineer who had worked on all these projects. In 1959 the municipality was turned into a town committee.

In 1961 the erstwhile Geological Survey of Pakistan initiated investigation of radioactive minerals like monazite around the Cox's Bazar sea-beach area.