Shwebo

This article is about the city in Sagaing Division. For other uses, see Shwebo (disambiguation).

Shwebo ရွှေဘိုမြို့
Shwebo Location in Burma
Coordinates: 22°34′0″N 95°42′0″E
Country	Burma
Division	Sagaing Division
District	Shwebo
Township
Founded	21 March 1752
Population
• Ethnicities	Burmans
• Religions	Theravada Buddhism
Time zone	MST (UTC6:30)

Shwebo (Burmese: ရွှေဘိုမြို့ [ʃwèbò mjo̰]) is a city in Sagaing Division, Myanmar, located 113 km northwest of Mandalay between the Irrawaddy and the Mu rivers. The city, also called Ratanasingha (ရတနာသိံဟ), was the capital of Myanmar from 1752 to 1760 during the Konbaung period.

It got the 4.37 inches (111 mm) of rainfall on 19 Oct 2011. It was the record breaking rainfall within 24 hours of Oct for past 48 years. The previous record was 3.84 inches (100 mm) of 24 Oct 1993.

History

Up to 1752, Shwebo was a village, called Moksobo (Burmese: မုဆိုးဘို [moʊʔ sʰó bò]; lit. "Hunter Chief") of about 300 houses. It lies near the site of the ancient Pyu city-state of Hanlin. In March 1752, the chief of the village Aung Zeya founded the Konbaung Dynasty to resist the upcoming invasion of Lower Burma-based Hanthawaddy forces. Aung Zeya, who also assumed the royal title of Alaungpaya, gained the allegiance of 46 surrounding villages, and organized defenses building a stockade and digging a moat around Moksobo. He renamed his village, Shwebo (lit. Golden Chief). Over the next eight years, Alaungpaya led the reunification of Burma with Shwebo as his capital.

Shwebo lost its status as capital after Alaungpaya's death in 1760. The successor Naungdawgyi moved the capital to Sagaing closer to the Irrawaddy river. Nonetheless, Shwebo continued to be an important region throughout the Konbaung era (1752–1885), providing a disproportionate share of soldiers that served in Konbaung's armies. The region was usually held as an appanage by the most senior princes, usually the crown prince. It was to Shwebo that Prince of Mindon went in 1853 to raise the standard of rebellion in his successful bid to overthrow his half brother Pagan.

Names of Shwebo

Five titles had been conferred to the city namely:

1. Moksobo(မုဆိုးဖို), its original name
2. Yadana-theinhka (ရတနာသိဃၤ)
3. Konbaung (ကုန္းေဘာင္)
4. Yangyi-aung (ရန္ၾကီေအာင္), and
5. Shwebo (ေရႊဘို), its modern name.

Transport

Shwebo is served by Myanmar Railways's Mandalay-Myitkyina railway line but is best reached by pickup truck or bus as the roads from Mandalay and Monywa are in reasonably good shape.

Economy

As with Monywa, the city is a trade center for agricultural produce, especially beans, rice and sesame from the surrounding plains between the Mu River and the Ayeyarwady River.

The major tourist attractions in Shwebo, although few tourists make the journey and facilities are very limited, are its numerous Buddhist temples, and the reconstruction of Alaungpaya's palace. The city is still surrounded by its ancient moat. There are many pagodas, such as Shwe-taza paya and Myodaunk zedi.

In the very hot summer, people who live in Shwebo believe that rain comes when people bring the Shwe-taza Buddha image around the town.^{[citation needed]}

Education

The town is home to the Shwebo University and Shwebo Government Technological College. There are three Basic Education High Schools namely B.E.H.S 1, 2 and 3.

External links

• "Shwebo, Burma", Falling Rain Genomics, Inc.
• "Shwebo Map — Satellite Images of Shwebo", Maplandia