Etymology
More than six hundred years ago an Islamic preacher Hazrat Badar Aawlia arrived in this city from the seas and chose Cheragi Pahar as his vantage point to spread the message of Islam among the locals. It was at the apex of this hill that the he lit a chati (lamp) and called out (ajaan) for people to join him in saying prayer to God. Chittagong's etymology can then be traced unmistakably back to "chati." And the hills are at the core of Chittagong's mythology.
Another theory is that the first group of brahmins to have settled in this region (after it was incorporated into Bengal from the Arakanese) were 'chatt-upadhyays'. Hence this region came to be known as chatto-gan (gan is the prakrit/Bengali term for village). A fact confirming this theory is that the majority of the kayastha of this region were of the kashyap gotra, which is also the gotra of the Chattopadhyays.
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