Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a country in South Asia.

Big rivers flow across it to the sea. Most of the land is flat and low. The capital city is Dhaka.

Bangladesh is a country in South Asia, beside the Bay of Bengal. India borders it on most sides, and Myanmar lies to the southeast. Its name means "Land of the Bengals."

Almost all of Bangladesh is a flat plain made by rivers. Two of Asia's great rivers, the Ganges (called the Padma here) and the Brahmaputra (called the Jamuna), meet and flow to the sea through a huge delta. Most of the land is less than 9 meters above sea level. The capital is Dhaka.

Bangladesh lies in the northeast of the Indian subcontinent, where it meets mainland Southeast Asia. It shares borders with the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, and with Myanmar to the southeast, and opens south onto the Bay of Bengal. Its area is about 147,570 square kilometers.

The country forms roughly the eastern two-thirds of the deltaic plain of the Padma (Ganges) and Jamuna (Brahmaputra). Apart from slightly higher old alluvium in the Barind and the Madhupur Tract and the hills of Sylhet and Chittagong, the plain is recent alluvium, generally less than 9 m above sea level. Britannica calls the rivers the most significant feature of the landscape, shaping both its physiography and people's way of life. About 175.7 million people lived there in 2025, according to the World Bank.

Dhaka is the biggest city in Bangladesh.

Many of its streets are busy with rickshaws and buses. Chittagong is a big port by the sea. Long ago, people built a huge brick monastery at Paharpur.

Dhaka, the capital, is the biggest city and one of the largest in South Asia. It stands just north of the Buriganga River. In the 1600s it was the capital of Mughal Bengal and a busy trading city, and it became the capital of Bangladesh in 1971. Chittagong is the country's major port, and Khulna, in the southwest, is a center of trade and industry.

At Paharpur, in the northwest, are the remains of Somapura Mahavihara, a great Buddhist monastery that was a famous center of learning until the 1100s. In the southwest, the old city of Bagerhat has an exceptional number of early mosques, many of them built of brick. Both are World Heritage Sites.

Dhaka lies in the flood basin of the Meghna, just north of the Buriganga, a channel of the Dhaleswari. Its origins go back to the 1st millennium CE; it rose to prominence in the 17th century as the Mughal capital of Bengal, later became capital of East Bengal and then East Pakistan, and in 1971 the capital of Bangladesh. Britannica names Lalbagh Fort, an incomplete 17th-century Mughal palace, among its landmarks. Chittagong is the major port and Khulna a commercial and industrial center near the port of Mongla.

UNESCO inscribed two cultural sites in 1985. Somapura Mahavihara at Paharpur shows the rise of Mahayana Buddhism in Bengal from the 7th century and was a renowned intellectual center until the 12th; with its simple, harmonious lines and rich carved decoration, it influenced Buddhist architecture as far away as Cambodia. The Mosque City of Bagerhat, once Khalifatabad, was founded in the 15th century by the Turkish general Ulugh Khan Jahan and has an exceptional number of mosques and early Islamic monuments, many of them built of brick.

Bangladesh gets lots and lots of rain.

In the rainy season, the rivers spill over the fields. The water leaves rich mud behind. Plants grow well in it.

Bangladesh has a monsoon climate: warm, humid and very rainy. Most of the rain falls from June to September or early October. Every year between June and October the rivers overflow and cover the countryside. The floods bring fertile silt that renews the soil, but big floods can also damage fields and villages.

The rivers often change their course. In 1787 a huge flood sent the Tista River east into the Brahmaputra, which then cut a new main channel, now called the Jamuna. In the far southeast, low hills rise in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Bangladesh has a typical monsoon climate. Summer highs reach the mid-30s °C, and most of the country receives more than 1,500 mm of rain a year; parts of the Sylhet area receive 3,800 to 5,000 mm. From June to October the rivers inundate the countryside, rising most in September or October; Britannica calls the floods both a blessing, renewing fertile silt, and a curse, damaging crops and hamlets. Storms early and late in the monsoon can bring winds above 160 km/h, and the country has built cyclone shelters and early-warning systems.

Rivers shift constantly: in 1787 the Tista diverted eastward into the Brahmaputra, which by the early 1800s had cut its present lower course, the Jamuna. None of the major rivers rises inside Bangladesh; the upper Padma rises in Nepal and the Jamuna in China. In the far southeast, the north-south ranges of the Chittagong Hill Tracts are generally below 600 m.

Bengal tigers live in the Sundarbans forest.

Spotted deer walk among the mangrove roots. Elephants live in the hills. Many kinds of birds fly over the rivers.

The Sundarbans is a huge mangrove forest on the coast, crossed by tidal channels, mudflats and small islands. It is home to the Bengal tiger, the best known of Bangladesh's meat-eating animals, and to the estuarine crocodile, the Indian python and about 260 kinds of birds. Spotted deer, once common across the country, are now found only in the Sundarbans region.

Herds of elephants live in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Sylhet region. The rhesus monkey is about the most common monkey, and on farms water buffaloes pull plows and carts.

Britannica counts more than 100 mammal species, though some have declined sharply since the early 20th century. The royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) is the best-known carnivore; the common leopard, the rare clouded leopard and three bears (sloth, Asiatic black and sun bear) also occur. Elephants live in herds of fewer than a dozen to nearly 100 in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and Sylhet. The spotted deer was once widespread but by the early 21st century was limited to the Sundarbans; the barasingha and hog deer have disappeared from the country.

UNESCO describes the Bangladesh Sundarbans (140,000 ha, inscribed 1997) as one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, a network of tidal waterways, mudflats and salt-tolerant mangrove islands with 260 bird species, the Bengal tiger, the estuarine crocodile and the Indian python. The forest is named for the sundari tree. The rivers suit fish farming, which supplies more than two-fifths of the country's fish; freshwater hilsa and marine pomfret are among the fish caught.

About 176 million people live in Bangladesh.

Most people speak Bangla, also called Bengali. Rice is the main crop. Many people enjoy flying kites.

About 176 million people lived in Bangladesh in 2025, and it is one of the most crowded countries on Earth. Most people are Bengali and speak Bangla (Bengali), the national language. Smaller Indigenous groups, such as the Chakma, Marma, Tripura and Mro of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the Santhal, Khasi and Garo, have their own languages.

Most people follow Islam, and there are also Hindu, Buddhist and Christian communities. Rice is the main crop, and the fish people catch include the freshwater hilsa and the pomfret from the sea. Football and cricket are popular, children play a team game called kabadi, and kite flying is enjoyed by young and old.

The vast majority are Bengali, an ethnic and linguistic group of diverse historical origins. Bengali (Bangla), an Indo-Aryan language related to Sanskrit, is the mother tongue of almost everyone; Indigenous minorities, chiefly in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Mro and others) and elsewhere (Santhal, Khasi, Garo, Hajang), speak their own languages, some Tibeto-Burman, and English is used in cities and among educated groups. Islam has been the official religion since a 1988 constitutional amendment; most Muslims are Sunni, Hindus are a significant minority, and the Chakma, Marma and Mro are mostly Buddhist.

Density exceeded 1,000 people per square kilometer in the early 21st century, and about one-third of people lived in cities in the 2010s. Rice is the predominant crop, and the country is one of the world's leading suppliers of raw jute. Rabindranath Tagore composed the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh, and Kazi Nazrul Islam was officially declared national poet in 2024. Distinctive popular music forms include bhatiali and baul.