Bengal’s Two-Century Nightmare: The Story of the Mug-Firingi Pirates

Imagine a thriving village on the coast of Bengal in the 17th century. A festival is underway, the air filled with laughter and music. Suddenly, from the winding rivers, a fleet of small, swift boats appears. Panic erupts. These are the dreaded ‘Harmad’—the Mug-Firingi pirates. What follows is not robbery, but annihilation. This was the reality for the people of Bengal for nearly two hundred years, a reign of terror that depopulated islands and left scars that remain to this day.

An Alliance from Hell: Who Were the Mug-Firingis?

This terrifying force was a marriage of convenience between two groups. The Mugs were seasoned Arakanese sailors, masters of the Bay of Bengal’s treacherous waterways. Their partners in crime were the Firingis—renegade Portuguese mercenaries, adventurers, and criminals who had fled their own settlements. Many came from as far as Bombay (Mumbai), bringing with them European naval tactics.

In the local tongue, the formidable Portuguese ‘Armada’ became the feared word ‘Harmad’, a name that would soon mean “pirate” to every child in Bengal. They initially came for trade, but the allure of easy plunder was too strong. They established bases on islands like Sandwip and turned the Sundarbans into their personal hunting ground, a desolate region that came to be known as ‘Mug Muluk’—the Kingdom of the Mugs. As historian Satish Chandra notes, it wasn’t nature that emptied the Sundarbans; it was the pirates.

A Trail of Fire and Tears: The Pirates’ Brutal Methods

The pirates’ strategy was one of pure terror. They attacked during moments of celebration—weddings, markets, and festivals—when people were most vulnerable. Their swift boats, called ‘galias’, allowed for lightning-fast raids and quick escapes.

No one was safe. Men, women, and children were rounded up like cattle. The French traveler François Bernier, a witness to this era, wrote that the King of Arakan deliberately used these Portuguese pirates as a weapon against the Mughals, giving them free rein to “plunder and steal.” He described how they would “sweep the rivers and coastal islands of Bengal… abducting everyone… and burning what they could not take.” The result? A once-thriving delta transformed into a “populist island where violent animals like a tiger now live.”

The fate of the captured was a vision of hell. The able-bodied were sold into slavery to European traders in Goa, Madras, and beyond. The Mugs used others for forced labor on their own lands. To prevent escape, their methods were unspeakably cruel: captives’ palms were pierced, and a rattan cane was threaded through the wounds, tying them together in a line. They were thrown under the decks of ships and fed scraps of dry rice. Many died on these horrifying journeys. Those who survived faced a lifetime of bondage.

The Empire Strikes Back: Shaista Khan’s Crusade

For decades, the Mughal Empire struggled to contain this “devil’s kingdom,” as Italian traveler Manucci called it. An initial attempt to expel the Portuguese from Hooghly in 1632 by Emperor Shah Jahan’s forces provided only a temporary respite.

The final reckoning came in 1666. The Mughal Governor of Bengal, the legendary Shaista Khan, decided that enough was enough. He launched a massive, coordinated military campaign. With a powerful navy and a determined army, he cornered the pirates in their main stronghold of Chittagong. After a fierce battle, he conquered the port, shattering the pirates’ power base and bringing an end to their long and bloody reign.

Echoes in the Present: The Scars That Remain

The Harmad may be gone, but their ghosts linger everywhere in Bengal.

• In Language: Everyday Bengali words like papeya (papaya), balti (bucket), botam (button), and kamra (room) are linguistic fossils of the Portuguese presence.
• On the Map: Place names like Magrahat (Mug Market) and Firingi Bazar (Foreigners’ Market) are stark reminders of who once walked there.
• In Society: The pirates left deep social wounds. Entire families were ostracized if a woman was captured, leading to the creation of new, lower-status castes like the ‘Mago Brahmin’.
• In Memory: The ultimate tribute to the era’s end is woven into the Bengali language itself. To this day, the verb “shaesta kora” means to punish or discipline someone decisively.

The next time a Bengali uses the word ‘shaesta’, they are unknowingly invoking the memory of the man who ended a two-hundred-year nightmare, a man who brought order to a land long terrorized by the pirates of the Sundarbans.

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