Fateh was born in the 14th-century into an aristocratic Bengali MuslimSunni family in the Bengal Sultanate. His forefathers – the Ilyas Shahis – were the inaugural dynasty of Bengal. Despite his family's long presence in the region, historians such as Ghulam Husain Salim assert that Fateh's ancestors were of Sistani origin, hailing from what is now eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan.[3] His predecessors lost control of Bengal to the Ganesha dynasty, and his father, Mahmud, was a farmer of rural Bengal in his early life. Following a coup in 1435, the nobles of Bengal installed Fateh's father to the throne, thus re-establishing Ilyas Shahi rule in Bengal.[4]
Accession and reign
Fateh Shah's accession occurred in 1481, as the nobles of Bengal deemed his brother Nuruddin Sikandar Shah to be mentally unfit.[5][6]
No reference of military expedition led by Fateh Shah is found. But from the numismatic evidence it can be presumed that his kingdom extended to Sylhet in the northeast and to the river Damodar in the southwest.[7] During his reign, the Habshis took important and influential positions in his court. Fateh Shah took some measures to take back control. But a conspiracy rose against him and later he was assassinated by the commander of the Habshi palace-guards, Shahzada Barbak, in 1487.
By his death, the rule of Ilyas dynasty came to an end.
^Sushila Mondal, History of Bengal Part 1 (1970), p.201
^Sarkar, Jadunath, ed. (1973) [First published 1948]. "VI: Later Ilyās Shahis and the Abyssinian Regime". The History of Bengal. Vol. II: Muslim Period, 1200–1757. Patna: Academica Asiatica. OCLC924890.
