Kingdom of Mrauk U
Arakan Kingdom
The Kingdom of Mrauk-U (Arakanese: မြောက်ဦး ဘုရင့်နိုင်ငံတော်) was a kingdom that existed on the Arakan coastal plain from 1429 to 1785. Based in the capital Mrauk U, near the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal, the kingdom ruled over what is now Rakhine State, Myanmar, and the southern part of Chittagong Division, Bangladesh. Though it started out as a protectorate of the Bengal Sultanate from 1429 to 1531, Mrauk-U went on to conquer Chittagong with the help of the Portuguese. It twice fended off the Toungoo Burma's attempts to conquer the kingdom in 1546–1547, and 1580–1581. At its height of power, it briefly controlled the Bay of Bengal coastline from the Sundarbans to the Gulf of Martaban from 1599 to 1603. In 1666, it lost control of Chittagong after a war with the Mughal Empire. Its existence continued until 1785, when it was conquered by the Konbaung dynasty of Burma.
It was home to a multiethnic population, with the Buddhists making up the majority and the city of Mrauk U being home to temples, shrines, mosques, seminaries and libraries. The kingdom was also a center of piracy and the slave trade. It was frequented by Arab, Danish, Dutch and Portuguese traders.
The public source identifies “Kingdom of Mrauk U” as arakan Kingdom. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kingdom, Mrauk and Arakan.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10791211. Authority coordinates are 21.028, 92.633. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1429, 1785, 1531 and 1546.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kingdom of Mrauk U” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.