The name of Sylhet is the anglicized form of the ancient Indo-Aryan term Srihatta.[4] In 1303, the Sufi Muslim leader Shah Jalal conquered Sylhet by defeating the local Hindu Raja.[5] Ibn Battuta visited Sylhet in the 14th century and saw Bengali Muslims transforming the region into an agricultural basket.[6] Sylhet was a mint town of the Bengal Sul
tanate. In the 16th-century, Sylhet was controlled by the Baro-Bhuyan zamindars and became a district of the Mughal Empire.[7] British rule began in the 18th century under the administration of the East India Company. With its ancient seafaring tradition, Sylhet became a key source of lascars in the British Empire. The Sylhet municipal board was established in 1867.[8] Originally part of the Bengal Presidency and later Eastern Bengal and Assam; the town was part of Colonial Assam between 1874 and 1947, when following a referendum and the partition of British India, it became part of East Bengal.[5] The Sylhet City Corporation was constituted in 2001. The Government of Bangladesh designated Sylhet a metropolitan area in 2009.
