The mosques were built during the governorship of Ulugh Khan Jahan, a Turkic military officer appointed as governor in the Sundarbans by Sultan Mahmud Shah of Bengal.

The historic city has more than 50 structures built in the local Bengal Sultanate variant style of Indo-Islamic architecture.

[7] The Bengal Sultanate attracted many immigrants from the Middle East and Central Asia, who brought with them ideas of Islamic architecture.

The high concentration of mosques suggests the rapidity with which the local population converted to Islam.

[citation needed] In south Bengal, the mosque city of Bagerhat displays the simplistic 'Khan Jahan Style' of Bengali Islamic architecture.

[9] Ulugh Khan Jahan was responsible for establishing a planned township with roads, bridges, and water supply tanks (of which the Ghoradighi and Dargadighi still survive), cisterns, and several mosques and tombs.

[10] In 1983, UNESCO drew up a master plan for the Bagerhat area[11] and it became a World Heritage Site in 1985.

The city covered 360 mosques[1] (most of them of identical designs) and many public buildings, mausoleums, bridges, network of roads and water reservoirs.

The material used in building construction was baked bricks, which over the centuries deteriorated under saline conditions of the soil and the atmosphere.

[1][3] The following includes a partial list of mosques, tombs or mausoleums and other monuments which have been restored from among the large number of ruins located in the city.

[5] The west wall in the interior has eleven mihrabs that are decorated with stonework and terracotta and the flooring is brickwork.

[4][5][1][3][14][15] The Nine Dome Mosque is located to the west of the takur dighi tank and built in the 15th century.

In what is typical to the Khan Jahan Style, the dome is supported on thick walls and topped with a cambered cornice.

However, it needs further repair work to prevent dampness inside the tomb, and also to the brickwork on the exterior surfaces.

It is distinctly different from the Khan Jahan style mosque in its exterior decorations, particularly the east façade, which depicts four rectangular panels bordered by foliated scrolls with merlons having plant motifs.

[4] The Khan Jahan Mausoleum or tomb is located on the northern bank of a water tank (a pond infested with crocodiles) called thakur dighi in Bengali language.

The pond is square in shape and the excavated material from the tank was used to make an embankment over which the Mausoleum has been built.

From recorded sources of 1866, it is also mentioned that the flooring had been inlaid with hexagonal encaustic tiles of different designs and colours (mostly blue, white and yellow).

There are inscriptions on the walls of the crypt which are inferred as providing historical information about Ulugh Khan Jahan's life.

[17] It is now a pilgrimage site where people pay homage to the man who dedicated his lifetime to building the city and its monuments.

[4][5][17] A small museum has been established by the Directorate of Archaeology of Bangladesh, in collaboration with UNESCO, in front of the Shait Gumbaz Mosque, where antiquaries collected from the area of the historical site are displayed providing knowledge on the history of Bagerhat.

It has three exhibit galleries of antiquaries related to the "Historic Mosque City of Bagerhat", which include inscriptions, potteries, terracotta plaques and ornamental bricks.