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Professor Habibullah should be judged not by the records of his jobs and positions, but by his capability of and contributions in the field of scholarship. He first drew attention of the scholarly world with his doctoral dissertation of London University on the Foundation of Muslim Rule in India. This immediately placed him in the ranks of an eminent historian. In the Indian context, Habibullah can be said to have worked as the pioneer of a doctrine where history is not complete without looking into the expansion of empire, administrative system, army, revenue system, economy, law and justice, society, culture, art, and architecture. He found that the study of pre-Mughal India appeared to be a luckless field and thereby was comparatively neglected by scholars. Therefore he selected to deal with the formation of a multi-religious state in the 13th century India which was formed by compromise and improvisation. With a comprehensive approach he diagnosed the transformation of the Turki Sultanate of Delhi into an Indo-Muslim Mamluk Kingdom. In doing so, Habibullah pointed to the “diffusion of those elements which were to dominate Indian life for several centuries. 

Almost immediately on his return from London, Sir Jadunath Sircar, the editor of the 2nd volume of the to history of Bengal by the Dhaka University, engaged him to write the two chapters on the Latter Ilyas Shahi dynasty and the Habshi interregnum, and the Hossain Shahi dynasty of Bengal. Many considered him as too young to be selected for such assignments. But those two chapters have mostly remained unsurpassed during the last seven decades.

Prof. Habibullah after 1950, though settled in the then East Pakistan he never found satisfaction in academic activities in a theocratic Pakistan. His outstanding secular views out him at a distance from the so called historians who were blindly distorting history in the name of religion. This situation was perhaps at the root of his effort to build organizations, to build history free from prejudices, one after the other.

Contents: Preface. 1. Professor ABM Habibullah: a brief review of his life and works/Enamul Haque. 2. Professor ABM Habibullah : My father/Zulekha Haque. 3. Professor A.B.M. Habibullah: historian and humanist/A.F. Salahuddin Ahmed. 4. ABU Mohamed Habibullah/M.R. Tarafdar. 5. Left in Bangladesh/Badruddin Umar. 6. Professor Habibullah and some aspects of mediaeval and modern history Calcutta and Dhaka/Barun De. 7. The impact of Kamal Ataturk’s ideas in Bengal/Sufia Ahmed. 8. Religion, politics and the state in Bangladesh/Anisuzzaman. 9. Higher education in Bangladesh: problems and prospects/Zillur Rahman Siddique. 10. My teacher my mentor/Latifa Akanda. 11. Revisiting Rabindranath’s nationalism/Serajul Islam Choudhary. 12. Continuity of civilization: from archaeology to history—a narrative of personal experience from Rom and Ago/A.B.M. Husain. 13. Racial composition in Bengalees: origin and development of Bengali speaking people/Ajoy Roy. 14. Islamic art-allegory and symbolism in Mughal paintings/Pervin Asadullah.15. Empiricism: by compromise and improvisation a lens for the early Islamic architecture of Bengal/Perween Hasan. 16. Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain-her ideas and thoughts on the emancipation of women/Shahanara Husain. 17. Monetary system in Bengal and the historical implication/A.K.M. Yaqub Ali. 18. History of development of coin collections of the Bengal Sultans in the four major museums in United Kingdom/Sutapa Sinha. 19. Reflections on the Sikha mouthpiece of ‘Buddhir Mukti Andolon’ (1926-38)/Md. Tawfiqul Haider. 20. Construction of Vijayanagar culture is there a colonial legacy?/Aniruddha Ray. 21. An unpublished portrait of emperor Shah Abbas-I of Persia standing with a musket/Asok Kumar Das. 22. Representation of Yavanas in early Indian texts and inscriptions/Suchandra Ghosh. 23. The oral tradition in ancient India and the evolution of the Susruta Samhita/Nayana Sharma Mukherjee, Samhita Sen, Sharmistha Chatterjee and Susmita Basu Majumdar. 24. Land documents of the Guptas from North Bengal/Sayantani Pal. 25. Fort of demon: an overview on Asurgarh-Narla/Baba Mishra. 26. History in many voices: local history in early twentieth century Bengal/Madhuparna Roychowdhury. 27. The endangered Mughal Katra buildings in Dhaka/Ayesha Begum. 28. The representation of the Buddha in early Indian art: a review/Sarita Khettry. 29. Commitment to nature in the modern art of Bangladesh/Nazrul Islam. 30. Dara Shukoh, the philosopher prince/Shahryar Iqbal. 31. Coins of Nasiruddin Mahmud Shah: types and chronology/Md. Rezaul Karim. 32. Two Razinama documents from Dhamrai in the collection of the Indian Museum, Kolkata/Shyamalkanti Chakravarti. 33. Royal hunting under the Mughals: some observations/Debraj Chakraborty. 34. Merchant community and the state in Bengal during the late medieval period/Shahnaj Husne Jahan. 35. Threat of terrorism roots, AIMS and varieties/Arun Coomer Bose. 36. Islam and visual culture: reflection on the art heritage of Muslim Bengal/Mohammad Yusuf Siddiq.