History

Sultanpur district is a district in the Awadh region of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. This district is a part of Faizabad division (officially Ayodhya division). It is a city situated on the banks of holy river Gomti. According to legend, it is said that Kush the son of Ram was born so it was the birth place of Kusa, the son of Lord Ram. This was identified with the Kusapura mentioned by Xuanzang, who said that Gautama Buddha taught here for six months and that it had a stupa built at the time of king Ashoka which was then in disrepair.

The town was under Bhar rule until around 1200, when it was supposedly conquered by a Muslim army under Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji. It was said that when Muslims during the time of the Mamluk dynasty came to trade in this area of Kusapura, the then Bhar rulers of Kusbhawanpur executed them and the horses were seized. When it was heard to the Sultan Alauddin Khalji that this incident took place, he gathered an army and attacked them at once, on the opposite bank of the Gomti River from Kusbhawanpur. The city of Kusbhawanpur was renamed after the Alauddin Khalji’s title Sultan and a new city was founded on the site, called Sultanpur. Old Sultanpur was eventually razed to the ground by the British after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, in retaliation for the murder of two British officers in the town at the beginning of the uprising.

Sultanpur was made a municipality in June 1869, with a municipal committee; a municipal board was formed in September 1884. In 1890 the ‘Victoria Manzil’ was built for the first agricultural exhibition, and it served as the town hall and the meeting place for the municipal board under British rule. At the turn of the 20th century, the town also had a police station and hospital, jail, poorhouse, leper asylum, and a dispensary which was rebuilt in 1895. During the British regime, when tehsils and parganas were made, Deputy commissioner of Sultanpur, Lt. J. Parkins developed this city to a great extent.