It is a busy commercial area that had come up with the growth of Calcutta during the British Raj and is thus one of the repositories of history in the city.

It is commonly held to derive its name from a large mosque which stood at the site of Cook and Company's livery stables.

It is bounded to the north by Bowbazar, the south by Janbazar, the east by Taltala and the west by Maidan.

The European inhabitants of Kalikata gradually forsook the narrow limits of the old palisades and moved to around the Maidan.

Gradually the areas to the south of the Great Tank and to the east along Chowringhee Road were emerging as preferred haunts for the Englishmen.

[7] The district lying between Dharmatala and Bowbazar and bounded on the west by Bentinck Street was in the 19th and 20th century inhabited by a variety of people that included Portuguese, other Europeans of poorer classes and Indians.

The area was full of ‘tortuous and narrow lanes, badly drained and reeking with foul odours, thickly populated and miserably housed.’ In this district on the northern side of Dharmatala is a bazaar called Chandney Chowk.

Rudyard Kipling in the last chapter of his Kolkata sketches published under the title of The City of Dreadful Nights, has given a lively description of the market and its frequenters.

[2] In the earliest list of police stations in Kolkata made in 1785, both Dharmatala and Dingabhanga were included.

[10] A three-horse omnibus plied briefly between Dharmatala and Barrackpore in November 1830 but the truly successful horse-drawn public transport was the tramcar.

It serves as an interchange station since the opening of Kolkata Metro Green Line 2 between Esplanade and Howrah Maidan.