Bagha Upazila: History
Alaypur village of Bagha was the headquarters of Laskar Khan Jaigirdar during the sixteenth century. Hazrat Shah Doulah settled at Bagha and started preaching Islam after being granted 42 parganas by the rulers. He also established a famous madrasa here. Bagha thana of present-day Rajshahi district was a thriving centre of learning in the early Muslim period. The place became famous after Shah Muazzam Danishmand (Maulana Shah Daula) from Baghdad settled there during the reign of the Sultan of Bengal Nasiruddin Nasrat Shah (1519–32) and built his khanqah there. An inscription table of the time of Sultan Nusrat Shah was discovered there that records the construction of a Jam’i mosque in 930 A.H. (1523-24 A.D.) One Abdul Latif visited the Bagha madrasah in 1609. There he met an elderly Sufi named Hawadah Main (Maulana Hamid Danishmand) son of Maulana Shah Daula, who was running a madrasah and a khanqah in a peaceful environment. Probably the madrasah was established during the reign of Nusrat Shah.
During the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, temporary camps were founded by the Pakistan Army in places such as Narayanpur, Bagha, Pakuria, Arani, Alaipur and Chawkrajapur and many brawls took place in these camps against the 400 Bengali freedom fighters of Bagha. 7 of these freedom fighters has been martyr.