Cox's Bazar is located 152 km south of Chittagong city. Its distance from Dhaka is 414 km. It is the largest tourist destination in Bangladesh. Cox's Bazar can be reached by road and bus from Dhaka, the capital of the country: The project to establish a railway line from Chittagong to Cox's Bazar has been adopted.
The modern Cox's Bazar is named after Lt. Cox (died 1896) who was an Indian military officer during the British rule. Cox's Bazar was once known as which literally means yellow flower. Another ancient name is . From the beginning of the ninth century until the Mughal conquest in 1616, a large part of Chittagong, including Cox's Bazar, belonged to the state. The Mughal emperor Shah was fascinated by the natural beauty of Cox's Bazar on his way to by a mountain road and ordered a camp to be set up there. About a thousand palanquins of his caravan took up position at , in Cox's Bazar. means thousand couches. After the , and , then the Portuguese and the British took control of the area.
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