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| Figure 24 – The unfinished southern gate of the Lalbag Fort, or more properly the ‘Aurangabad Fort’, which is situated on the bank of the Buriganga river in Dhaka. It was built between 1677 and 1679 by Prince Mohammad Azzam, son of the Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb, and later embellished by Shaista Khan, the governor of Bengal from 1679-88. The fort appears never to have been completed, as it contains only a mosque, the tomb of Bibi Para (daughter of Shaista Khan and wife of Prince Azzam), a water tank, a building containing baths and an audience hall—which can only be a fragment of what the fort was intended to hold. In addition, sections of the wall, such as the southern gate, were never completed. For many years in the modern era Lalbag Fort was used as a Police Station, presumably using the audience hall within the fort. The fort is now a museum and one of the major tourist attractions in Dhaka. |