Momtazur Rahman Tarafdar
Momtazur Rahman Tarafdar (Bengali: মমতাজুর রহমান তরফদার; 1928–1997) was a Bangladeshi historian and professor. Born on 1 August 1928 in Meghagacha, Bogra District, he studied at Azizul Haque College and the University of Dhaka. He earned a BA in 1949, an MA in Islamic history and culture in 1951, and a PhD in 1961.
He started teaching at Haraganga College in 1952, then joined the University of Dhaka in 1953 and worked there until his death. He received a Nuffield Foundation fellowship (1972–1974) and, in 1997, a fellowship at Duke University. He also received the Bangla Academy Literary Award.
Tarafdar’s PhD thesis, Hussain Shahi Bengal, was published as a book and is considered a definitive history of Bengal, covering its administration, art, architecture, economy, literature, and religion during the Hussain Shahi dynasty. He studied the relationship between Hindi and Bengali medieval poetry and wrote about the arrival of Islam in Bengal in his essay The Cultural Identity of Bengali Muslims as Reflected in Medieval Bengali Literature. He was a secularist who believed history should be divided by economic activity, not by the religion of rulers. He died on 31 July 1997.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:25 (CET).