MONGHYR, a town and district of British India, in the Bhagalpur division of Behar and Orissa. The town is on the right bank of the Ganges, and has a railway station. Pop. (1931) 52,863. Monghyr, which appears under the form of Mudgagiri in an inscription of the 9th century A.D., was, under the Moham medans, a place of military importance and frequently the seat of local governors or commandants. Shah Shuja built himself a palace here and in 1761, Nawab Mir Kasim Ali moved his capital here from Murshidabad. The walls and ramparts of the fort are still standing and give Monghyr a unique appearance among the towns of Behar. The fort dates back beyond 158o, when it was re paired by Todar Mal, Akbar's general and governor. Inside it is the tomb of an unknown saint erected in 1497. The house of Gurghin Khan, the Armenian general of Mir Kasim Ali, stands on a small hill 3 m. east of the town. Monghyr was captured by the British in 1763, and it was here that, three years later, Clive quelled "the White Mutiny" of the European officers of the army. Monghyr was formerly famous for its manufactures of firearms, swot ds and iron articles of every kind. Its chief industry now is the manufacture of cigarettes, which is carried on in a factory of the Peninsular Tobacco company, which em ployed nearly 3,00o hands in 1925.
The DISTRICT OF MONGHYR has an area of 3,927 square miles. The Ganges divides it into two portions. The northern, intersected by the Burh Gandak and Tiljuga, two tributaries of the Ganges, is a flat, closely cultivated country, subject to inundations. There are many marshes, of which the largest is the Kabar Tal (7 sq.m.). To the south of the Ganges the country is dry and much less fertile, and irrigation is necessary. Some ranges of hills and isolated plains occur in this part of the district. The chief are the Kharagpur hills with a length of 20 m., and an average breadth of 24 m. which rise at Maruk to 1,628 ft. above sea-level, and the Gidheswar (or Gidhaur) hills, which cover about 8o square miles. At Jamalpur (pop. 30.346), 6 m. from Monghyr, are the engineering workshops of the railway company which employ 11,000 workmen. Slate is quarried in the Kharagpur hills; the output in 1921 was nearly 3,00o tons. Pop. (1931) 2,287,154.