Who was the richest agricultural land in the ancient world?
It was Bengal. At present day Bengal is divided into Bangladesh
and east Bengal. But clearly it was Bengal As mentioned in Richard
M.Eaton's "The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier,
1204-1760":
"In the late thirteenth century, Marco Polo noted the commercial
importance of Bengali cotton, and in 1345 Ibn Battuta admired the
fine muslin cloth he found there. Between 1415 and 1432 Chinese
diplomats wrote of Bengal's production of fine cotton cloths
(muslins), rugs, veils of various colors, gauzes (Pers.,
shāna-bāf), material for turbans, embroidered silk, and brocaded
taffetas. A century later Ludovico di Varthema, who was in Gaur
between 1503 and 1508, noted: "Fifty ships are laden every year in
this place with cotton and silk stuffs. These same stuffs go
through all Turkey, through Syria, through Persia, through Arabia
Felix, through Ethiopia, and through all India." A few years later
Tome Pires described the export of Bengali textiles to ports in the
eastern half of the Indian Ocean. Clearly, Bengal had become a
major center of Asian trade and manufacture."
"Around 1508, Varthema found in Gaur "the richest merchants I
have ever met with.""
From "Broken limbs, broken lives: ethnography of a hospital ward
in Bangladesh" by Shahaduz Zaman:
"To Ibn Battuta, a 14th century travellar from Africa, Bengal
was a 'hall full of bounties and the wealthiest and cheapest land
of the world.'"
Manouchi - the Venetian who became chief physician to Aurangzeb
(in the 17th century) wrote:
"Bengal is of all the kingdoms of the Moghul, best known in
France..... We may venture to say it is not inferior in anything to
Egypt - and that it even exceeds that kingdom in its products of
silks, cottons, sugar, and indigo. All things are in great plenty
here, fruits, pulse, grain, muslins, cloths of gold and
silk..."
The French traveller, François Bernier described 17th century
Bengal:
"The knowledge I have acquired of Bengal in two visits inclines
me to believe that it is richer than Egypt. It exports in and
abundance cottons silks, rice, sugar and butter. It produces amply
for it's own consumption of wheat, vegetables, grains, fowls, ducks
and geese. It has immense herds of pigs and flocks of sheep and
goats. Fish of every kind it has in profusion. From Rajmahal to the
sea is an endless number of canals, cut in bygone ages from the
Ganges by immense labour for navigation and irrigation."
Jean BaptiseTavernier writing in the 17th century in his
"Travels in India".
" ....even in the smallest villages rice, flour, butter, milk,
beans and other vegetables, sugar and sweetmeats can be procured in
abundance ...."
In 1757 Clive of the East India Company had observed of
Murshidabad in Bengal:
"This city is as extensive, populous and rich as the city of
London..."
Dacca was even more famous as a manufacturing town, It's muslin
a source of many legends and its weavers had an international
reputation that was unmatched in the medieval world. Sir Charles
Trevelyan described Dacca as "Manchester of India".
