Jagannathpur Upazila

Jagannathpur জগন্নাথপুর
Upazila
Lakes of Jagannathpur
Country	Bangladesh
Division	Sylhet Division
District	Sunamganj District
Government
• MP (Sunamganj-3)	MA Mannan (Awami League)
Area
• Total	368.27 km2 (142.19 sq mi)
Population
• Total	225,271
• Density	610/km2 (1,600/sq mi)
Time zone	BST (UTC+6)
Postal code	3060-65

Jagannathpur (Devanagari: जगन्नथपुर, Bengali: জগন্নাথপুর) is an upazila located in the south-eastern corner of the district of Sunamganj and in the middle of the division of Sylhet, which is in north east of Bangladesh. The upazila is bordered with Chhatak in the north, to the east Bishwanath, to the south east is Balaganj, Nabiganj on the south, to the west Derai and Sunamganj Sadar in the north west.

Jagannathpur was an important part of Muazzamabad, as Kamalshahi, capital and mint city of Muazzamabad was located in north-east of the present-day Jagannathpur Upazila proper. However, according to a ballad written by one Taranath Chaudhury, Jagannathpur was a kingdom and Vijay Manikya was its king and this king was a follower of Jagannath Mishra, who was the father of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534). Jagannath Misrah built a Basu Dev temple under the auspice of Vijay Manikya and this temple was named after Jagannath Misrah, i.e. Jagannath temple. Eventually a settlement established encircling the Jagannath temple and as the settlement grew, it became a village, which inherited the name from the temple. However, historians such as Achutyacharan Chaudhury and Syed Mujtaba Ali are in opinion that Taranath Chaudhury characterised his song on Manikya Dynasty of Tripura, but the peasants and ryots of Jagannathpur found pride in that ballad and begun to misrepresent it as a royal chronicle of Jagannathpur. They also proclaim that Vijay Manikkya established a kingdom called Pandua on the eastern border of Jagannathpur, but the name of Pandua has changed to Perua, which now has shrunk to a tiny village market between Jalalpur and Habibpur. In reality, Pandua is a ruined city in Malda district of West Bengal, India, which means Pandua in Malda was the location of Taranath Chaudhury's ballad.