To the people of Sylhet, Hazrat Shah Jalal is a deeply revered name, bound up with the history of Islam's spread in the region.
According to historians, early in the fourteenth century, around 1303 CE, Sylhet came under Muslim rule, and Shah Jalal and his companions spread the call to Islam in the region.
One of the oldest written witnesses is Ibn Battuta's Rihlah. Around 1346 CE he went into the hill country of Kamarupa to visit Shaykh Jalal ad-Din. He wrote that the shaykh was given to devotion and long fasts, and that many people of the region had accepted Islam at his hands. Historians generally identify this shaykh with Shah Jalal of Sylhet.
ⓘ Many miraculous tales are told of Shah Jalal that have no reliable written source; only what the histories record is kept here. Whether Ibn Battuta's Shaykh Jalal ad-Din and Shah Jalal of Sylhet are the same person is discussed by historians; most researchers think they are.