1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Shahjahanpur

SHAHJAHANPUR, a city and district of British India, in the Bareilly division of the United Provinces. The city is on the left bank of the river Deoha or Garra, 507 ft. above the sea-level, with a station on the Oudh and Rohilkhand railway, 768 m. N.W. of Calcutta, and a military cantonment. Pop. (1901) 75,128. It was founded in 1647 during the reign of Shah Jahan, whose name it bears, by Nawab Bahadur Khan, a Pathan. His mosque is the only building of antiquarian interest. There is a manufacture of sugar, but no great trade.

The District of Shahjahanpur has an area of 1727 sq. m. It consists of a long and narrow tract running up from the Ganges towards the Himalayas, and is for the most part level and without any hills. The principal rivers are the Gumti, Khanaut, Garai and Ramganga. To the north-east the country resembles the tarai in the preponderance of waste and forest over cultivated land, in the sparseness of population and in general unhealthiness. Between the Gumti and the Khanaut the country varies from a rather wild and unhealthy northern region to a densely inhabited tract in the south, with a productive soil cultivated with sugar-cane and other remunerative crops. The section between the Deoha and Garai comprises much marshy land;but south of the Garai, and between it and the Ramganga, the soil is mostly of a sandy nature. From the Ramganga to the Ganges in the south is a continuous low country of marshy patches, alternating with a hard clayey soil that requires much irrigation in parts. Shahjahanpur contains a number of jhils or lakes, which afford irrigation for the spring crops. The climate is very similar to that of most parts of Oudh and Rohilkhand, but moister than that of the Doab. The annual rainfall averages about 37 in. In 1901 the population was 921,535. The principal crops are wheat, rice, pulse, millets, sugar-cane and poppy. The district suffered very severely from the famine of 1877–1879. It is traversed by the Lucknow-Bareilly section of the Oudh and Rohilkhand railway, with a branch northwards from Shahjahanpur city. At Rosa is a large sugar refinery and rum distillery.

Shahjahanpur was ceded to the English by the nawab of Oudh in 1801. During the Mutiny of 1857 it became the scene of open rebellion. The Europeans were attacked when in church; three were shot down, but the remainder, aided by a hundred faithful sepoys, escaped. The force under Lord Clyde put a stop to the anarchy in April 1858, and shortly afterwards peace and authority were restored.