Jashore

About Jashore

Jashore (long spelled Jessore in English) sits in the south-west of Bangladesh, with India’s West Bengal on its western border. Jhenaidah lies to the north, Magura and Narail to the east, and Khulna and Satkhira to the south. The Bhairab, Kobadak, Chitra, Betna and Mukteshwari rivers wind across a flat, densely farmed plain, and in the south-east the low basin around Bhabadaha is prone to long-standing waterlogging.

Jashore town is a busy regional centre with an airport, a large cantonment, a public university of science and technology and one of the oldest public libraries in the subcontinent. About 40 km to the west, Benapole is the country’s largest land port, where much of Bangladesh’s overland trade with India passes.

For most Bangladeshis, though, Jashore means two seasonal things: fields of marigolds, gladioli and roses around Godkhali that supply flowers to the whole country, and the date-palm juice and gur of winter, celebrated in the local saying that date juice is the pride of Jashore.

History

The name is old and its origin is debated; one popular account links it to the word jasohara, “taker of glory”, said to describe a rising rival to the old capital of Gaur. In the late sixteenth century the region was part of the domain of Raja Pratapaditya, one of the Baro-Bhuiyan chiefs who resisted Mughal rule. In 1781 the British made Jashore a separate district, often described as the first district the East India Company created in Bengal, and the town grew as an administrative and trading centre; the Jessore Institute Public Library was founded in 1854.

The poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, who brought blank verse and the sonnet into Bangla, was born at Sagardari in Keshabpur in 1824. In 1971 Bengali soldiers at Jashore cantonment rose against the Pakistan army at the end of March, and Bir Sreshtho Nur Mohammad Sheikh fell at Goalhati in Sharsha. Jashore was freed in early December, among the first districts to be liberated.

Economy and livelihoods

Farming is varied and commercial. Jhikargachha and Sharsha grow flowers on hundreds of hectares, and the Godkhali wholesale market sets prices for florists across the country. Vegetables, rice, jute, sugarcane and date-palm gur are major crops, and the Chanchra area of Jashore town is the country’s best-known hub of fish hatcheries, sending fish fry to farmers nationwide. Trade is the other pillar: Benapole land port handles a large share of imports and exports with India, and the Noapara river port at Abhaynagar moves fertiliser, cement, coal and grain, alongside jute and other mills. Jashore is also known for nakshi kantha and the hand-embroidered “Jashore stitch”.

Food, culture and festivals

Every January the Madhu Mela fair at Sagardari marks the poet’s birth anniversary with music, poetry and stalls on the bank of the Kobadak. Winter mornings bring fresh khejur rosh and pitha made with patali gur, and sweet shops at Jamtala in Sharsha are known well beyond the district.

Women’s embroidery is an important living craft: Jashore stitch kurtas, saris and nakshi kantha quilts are made in village homes and sold through local outlets across the country.

Places to visit in Jashore

1. Madhusudan’s house, Sagardari

   The ancestral home of Michael Madhusudan Dutt in Keshabpur, now a museum with a garden on the bank of the Kobadak river. The tree he is said to have sat under as a boy still stands nearby.

2. Godkhali flower fields

   In Jhikargachha upazila, fields of marigold, rose, tuberose and gladiolus stretch along the Jashore–Benapole road. Winter, especially the weeks before Ekushey February, Pahela Falgun and Valentine’s Day, is the best time to see them in bloom.

3. Benapole land port

   The busiest land border crossing in Bangladesh, facing Petrapole in India. Travellers to Kolkata cross here, and the truck queues give a sense of its scale.

4. Bharat Bhayna (Deul Bharat), Keshabpur

   A large brick mound by the Bhadra river believed to be the remains of an early Buddhist temple from around the fifth to seventh century. Excavations revealed many cells around a central platform.

5. Jessore Institute Public Library

   Founded in 1854 in the heart of Jashore town, it is one of the oldest public libraries in the region and still a cultural hub with a theatre and reading rooms.

What Jashore is famous for

• Jashore date molasses (khejur gur)
• Jashore stitch embroidery
• Nakshi kantha
• Fresh flowers

How to get to Jashore

Jashore is one of the easiest districts to reach from Dhaka. Several airlines fly to Jashore airport in about 40 minutes. By road, buses via the Padma Bridge take roughly four to five hours from Sayedabad or Gabtoli. Trains on the Padma Bridge rail link, such as the Rupashi Bangla Express to Benapole, run through Jashore, and older intercity services reach it via the Jamuna bridge and Ishwardi.

Markets and haats

Godkhali flower market

A roadside wholesale market in Jhikargachha that comes alive at dawn, when growers bring baskets of marigolds and bundles of roses and gladioli to sell to traders bound for Dhaka and other cities.

Jashore Boro Bazar

The old central market of Jashore town by the Bhairab river, a dense maze of shops for spices, cloth, gur, utensils and groceries.

Benapole bazaar

The busy market around the land port, with money changers, clothing and everyday goods for travellers and traders crossing to India.

Jashore at a glance

Shops from Jashore on Midmart

No shop from Jashore is selling on Midmart yet.

Questions about Jashore

More districts in Khulna Division

• Bagerhat Khan Jahan’s mosque city on the edge of the Sundarbans
• Chuadanga Border farmland of date molasses, betel leaf and the Darshana sugar mill
• Jhenaidah Sultanate mosques, Naldanga temples and the giant banyan of Kaliganj
• Khulna River city of shrimp and the gateway to the Sundarbans
• Kushtia Land of Lalon and Tagore, tiler khaja and Kumarkhali handlooms
• Magura Raja Sitaram’s country of jute fields, pera sandesh and Khamarpara doi
• Meherpur Mujibnagar, where Bangladesh’s first government took its oath
• Narail S M Sultan’s Chitra river country, home of boat races and cricketers
• Satkhira Early mangoes, soft-shell crabs and the western Sundarbans