Sirajul Islam

Sirajul Islam is the chairman of the Board of Editors of Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of Bangladesh, and the editor of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. He is a prominent Bangladeshi historian, famous for his works on agriculture, British era land tenure and social history of Bengal.

Islam served as a professor of history at the University of Dhaka. He gave up his day job five years before the formal date of retirement, to make time for Banglapedia, in 2000.

A corresponding fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Islam was a Senior Commonwealth Staff Fellow at the University of London (1978–79), a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Urbana Champaign (1990–91), and a British Academy Visiting Professor (2004).

In 2002, 10 volumes of Banglapedia, published by Asiatic Society, came out in his editorship. In 1991, 3 volumes of the History of Bangladesh (political, economic and socio-cultural), published by Asiatic Society, came out in his editorship. For the Society, he is working on the Children’s Banglapedia and the Cultural Survey of Bangladesh. He also is in charge of the National Online Biography project of the Society and the Banglapedia Trust.

While at his 34-year-long stint at the University, he wrote major seminal works like Permanent Settlement in Bengal (1978), The Bengal Land Tenure (1990) and the Rural History of Bangladesh (1990). He also edited the 4 volume Bangladesh District Record Survey.