sagaing
{{Short description|Town in Sagaing Region, Myanmar}}
{{distinguish|Saging|Sagging (disambiguation){{!}}Sagging}}
{{about|the city in Myanmar}}
{{Infobox settlement
| other_name = Jayapura
| settlement_type = Town
| native_name = {{nobold|{{lang|my|စစ်ကိုင်းမြို့}}}}
| official_name = Sagaing
| pushpin_label_position = bottom
| pushpin_map = Myanmar
| pushpin_map_caption = Location in Myanmar
| image_skyline = Sagaing3.jpg
| image_caption = The Yadanabon Bridge on the Irrawaddy
| image_map =
| map_caption =
| subdivision_type = Country
| subdivision_name = {{flag|Myanmar}}
| subdivision_type1 = Region
| subdivision_name1 = {{flag|Sagaing Region}}
| subdivision_type2 = Region
| subdivision_name2 = Sagaing District
| subdivision_type3 = Region
| subdivision_name3 = Sagaing Township
| unit_pref = Imperial
| area_total_sq_mi =
| population = 83,949
| population_as_of = 2023
| population_blank1_title = Ethnicities
| population_blank2 = {{hlist|Buddhism|Islam}}
| population_blank2_title = Religions
| population_density_km2 = auto
| coordinates = {{coord|21|52|56|N|95|58|43|E|region:MM|display=inline,title}}
| leader_title = Mayor
| elevation_m =
| timezone = MMT
| utc_offset = +6.30
| website =
}}
Sagaing ({{MYname|MY=စစ်ကိုင်းမြို့|MLCTS=cac kuing: mrui.}}, {{IPA|my|zəɡáɪɰ̃ mjo̰|pron}}) is a town in the Sagaing Region of Myanmar. It is located on the Irrawaddy River, {{cvt|20|km}} to the south-west of Mandalay on the opposite bank of the river. Sagaing, with its numerous Buddhist monasteries, is an important religious and monastic centre. The pagodas and monasteries crowd the numerous hills along the ridge running parallel to the river. The central pagoda, Soon U Ponya Shin Pagoda, is connected by a set of covered staircases that run up the {{cvt|240|m}} hill.
Today, with about 70,000 inhabitants, the city is part of Mandalay metropolitan area, home to more than 1,022,000 inhabitants as of 2011. It is a frequent tourist destination for day trippers, usually as part of the "three former capitals" itinerary alongside Amarapura and Innwa.
The city is home to five institutions of higher learning: the Sagaing Institute of Education, Sagaing Education College, Sagaing Technological University, Sagaing University of Co-operative and Management, and Sagaing University. The latter was established on 11 February 2012; it is located in Pakatoe Quarter, Sagaing Township, with an area of {{cvt|300.35|acre|disp=flip}}.
Name
The classical name of Sagaing is Zeyapura ({{lang|my|ဇေယျာပူရ}}; {{langx|pi|Jayapura}}), which literally translates to "city of victory."{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.281437|title=Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States|last=Hardiman|first=John Percy|date=1901|publisher=Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma|language=en}}
History
Sagaing was the capital of Sagaing Kingdom (1315–1364), one of the minor kingdoms that rose up after the fall of Pagan dynasty, where one of Thihathu's sons, Athinkhaya, established himself.{{cite book|last= Coedès|first= George|author-link= George Coedès|editor= Walter F. Vella|others= trans.Susan Brown Cowing|title= The Indianized States of south-east Asia|year= 1968|publisher= University of Hawaii Press|isbn= 978-0-8248-0368-1}}{{rp|227}} During the Ava period (1364–1555), the city was the common fief of the crown prince or senior princes. During the reign of King Naungdawgyi, Sagaing briefly became the royal capital between 1760 and 1763.
On 8 August 1988, Sagaing was the site of mass public protests in support of the 8888 Uprising, which were brutally crushed by a massacre in which around 300 civilians were killed by local police forces.[http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=656&page=15 Irrawaddy article 1997] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101004082722/http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=656&page=15 |date=2010-10-04 }}
Despite its name, the town is not the capital of Sagaing Region.{{cite news |title=Conflict in Upper Myanmar reaches outskirts of Sagaing capital |url=https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/conflict-in-upper-myanmar-reaches-outskirts-of-sagaing-capital/ |work=Myanmar Now |date=14 June 2023}} However, groups including the civil society group "Steering Committee for the Return of All Regional Offices to Sagaing City in Accordance with the Constitution" object to this saying that the use of Monywa as the regional capital is unconstitutional per the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar.{{cite news |title=စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်းရဲ့ မြို့တော် "မုံရွာ"ဟု လွှတ်တော်မှာ ဖြေကြားခဲ့တဲ့ ပညာရေးဒုဝန်ကြီးထံကို ကန့်ကွက်စာပေးပို့ |trans-title=Deputy Minister of Education who asked "Monywa" as capital of Sagaing receives protest |date=6 December 2018 |url=https://voiceofmyanmarnews.com/news/2018/12/06/စစ္ကုိင္းတုိင္းရဲ႕-ၿမဳိ/ |work=Voice of Myanmar |lang=my}}
As the epicentre of the 7.7-magnitude 2025 Sagaing earthquake, the city suffered loss of life as well as extensive damage to its buildings and infrastructure alongside neighbouring Mandalay. The Ava Bridge, one of two road-rail bridges connecting Sagaing to Mandalay, has partially collapsed.{{cite news |last1=Mehrotra |first1=Vani |date=28 March 2025 |title=Under-Construction Skyscraper In Bangkok Collapses After 7.7-Magnitude Earthquake Hits Myanmar |url=https://www.news18.com/world/myanmar-earthquake-videos-bangkok-skyscraper-collapses-tremors-strong-earthquakes-hit-myanmar-9278285.html |access-date=28 March 2025 |work=CNN-News18}} The city's fire station also collapsed, hampering relief efforts and trapping many.{{cite news|title=စစ်ကိုင်းတစ်မြို့လုံး ၈၀ ရာခိုင်နှုန်း ပြိုကျပျက်စီးပြီး လတ်တလောသေဆုံးသူ စာရင်း ၂၀၀ နီးပါး အတည်ပြုနိုင်ကာ ထိခိုက်သေဆုံးသူ ရာချီ ရှိနိုင်ကာ ကယ်ဆယ်ရေးလုပ်မည့်သူမရှိ၊ မီးသတ်ဌာနတစ်ခုလုံး ပြိုကျပျက်စီးနေ|trans-title=80% of entire Sagaing town collapsed, death toll currently at 150 with hundreds more casualties expected as no rescue efforts, one fire station collapsed trapping fire department.|language=my|url=https://yktnews.com/2025/03/209381/|access-date=29 March 2025|work=Khit Thit Media|date=29 March 2025}} More than 100 bodies were recovered from the rubble of destroyed builings and 90 percent of structures were destroyed.{{cite news |title=Myanmar earthquake leaves Sagaing in ruins as death toll surpasses 100 |url=https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/32617/ |access-date=2 April 2025 |work=Myanmar Now |date=2 April 2025}}{{cite news|title=စစ်ကိုင်း ပြိုကျဗလီ ၃ ခုထဲမှ ၁၅၄ ဦးကျော် အလောင်းတွေ့၊ မူကြိုကလေးများ ပိတ်မိနေဆဲ|language=my|url=https://www.dvb.no/post/697694|access-date=30 March 2025|work=Democratic Voice of Burma|date=30 March 2025}} An estimated over 150 Muslim worshippers in the city died across three collapsed mosques.{{cite news|title=အင်အားပြင်း ငလျင်ကြောင့် စစ်ကိုင်းမြို့တွင် သေဆုံးသူ ၂၀၀ ကျော် ရှိလာပြီး ပိတ်မိနေသူများစွာ ကျန်ရှိနေ|trans-title=Powerful earthquake kills over 200 in Sagaing, many trapped|url=https://news-eleven.com/article/301574|access-date=30 March 2025|work=Weekly Eleven|date=30 March 2025}} Out of the five mosques in Sagaing, four collapsed due to the earthquake.{{cite news|title=မန္တလေးမှာ ဗလီ ၃၀ထက်မနည်း ပြိုကျပျက်စီးပြီး လူသေဆုံးမှုများ|url=https://www.ludunwayoo.com/news-mm/2025/03/28/116111/|date=28 March 2025|access-date=28 March 2025|publisher=LuduNwayOo}} The Min Street Mosque is feared to have collapsed with over 100 people inside. Several monastic schools and a nunnery in the city were also damaged, likely killing people in the hundreds and trapping over 900 monks across four schools.{{cite news|title=ငလျင်ဒဏ်ကြောင့် သေဆုံးသူ ၁၆၀၀ ကျော်အနက် မန္တလေးတိုင်းတွင် အများဆုံးဖြစ်နေ|trans-title=Earthquake damage increases death toll past 1600, Mandalay Region most hit|url=https://myanmar-now.org/mm/news/62265/|date=30 March 2025|work=Myanmar Now|language=my}}
Demographics
In 2014, the city had 81,432 people within its city limits. The broader Sagaing Township had 307,194 people.{{cite report |author=Department of Population |date=October 2017 |title=The 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census, Sagaing Township Report |url=https://www.themimu.info/sites/themimu.info/files/documents/TspProfiles_Census_Sagaing_2014_ENG.pdf |publisher=MIMU |access-date=2 April 2025}} In 2019, the city's population dropped to 79,944 people{{cite report |author=Myanmar Information Management Unit |date=September 2019 |title=Sagaing Myone Daethasaingyarachatlatmya|script-title=my:စစ်ကိုင်းမြို့နယ် ဒေသဆိုင်ရာအချက်လက်များ|url=https://themimu.info/sites/themimu.info/files/documents/TspProfiles_GAD_Sagaing_2019_MMR.pdf |trans-title=Sagaing Township Regional Information |publisher=MIMU |access-date=2 April 2025}} before returning to 83,939 people in 2023. However, the broader Sagaing township area had fallen in population to 295,195 people.
Climate
Located in the rain shadow of the Arakan Mountains, Sagaing has a borderline hot semi-arid climate (Köppen BSh) just short of a tropical savanna climate (Aw). The city receives less than a third of the rainfall that Chittagong has at a similar latitude on the Bay of Bengal. Unlike most monsoonal semi-arid climates, the rainy season is relatively long at around five to six months, while variability and extreme monthly and daily rainfalls are much lower than usual with this type of climate.See {{cite journal |last=Camberlin |first=Pierre |doi=10.3354/cr00856|url=http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/49/82/26/PDF/camberlin_CR_revised.pdf|title=More variable tropical climates have a slower demographic growth|year=2010|journal=Climate Research|volume=41|pages=157–167|bibcode=2010ClRes..41..157C |doi-access=free}}
{{Weather box
| location = Sagaing (1991–2020)
| single line = Y
| metric first = Y
| width = auto
|collapsed =
| Jan record high C = 34.5
| Feb record high C = 37.7
| Mar record high C = 42.0
| Apr record high C = 45.5
| May record high C = 45.2
| Jun record high C = 40.5
| Jul record high C = 40.0
| Aug record high C = 38.4
| Sep record high C = 38.8
| Oct record high C = 38.0
| Nov record high C = 37.0
| Dec record high C = 36.5
| year record high C =
|Jan high C = 29.5
|Feb high C = 32.6
|Mar high C = 36.4
|Apr high C = 38.3
|May high C = 36.0
|Jun high C = 34.4
|Jul high C = 33.7
|Aug high C = 33.0
|Sep high C = 33.2
|Oct high C = 32.8
|Nov high C = 31.4
|Dec high C = 29.2
| year high C = 33.4
|Jan mean C = 22.0
|Feb mean C = 24.5
|Mar mean C = 28.6
|Apr mean C = 31.4
|May mean C = 30.9
|Jun mean C = 30.3
|Jul mean C = 29.9
|Aug mean C = 29.5
|Sep mean C = 29.4
|Oct mean C = 28.5
|Nov mean C = 25.9
|Dec mean C = 22.6
| year mean C = 27.8
|Jan low C = 14.5
|Feb low C = 16.5
|Mar low C = 20.8
|Apr low C = 24.6
|May low C = 25.8
|Jun low C = 26.2
|Jul low C = 26.2
|Aug low C = 25.9
|Sep low C = 25.5
|Oct low C = 24.2
|Nov low C = 20.4
|Dec low C = 16.0
| year low C = 22.2
| Jan record low C = 10.7
| Feb record low C = 11.0
| Mar record low C = 13.5
| Apr record low C = 18.7
| May record low C = 19.3
| Jun record low C = 20.5
| Jul record low C = 20.0
| Aug record low C = 20.5
| Sep record low C = 19.2
| Oct record low C = 16.7
| Nov record low C = 14.0
| Dec record low C = 12.3
| year record low C =
|precipitation colour = green
|Jan precipitation mm = 5.0
|Feb precipitation mm = 3.5
|Mar precipitation mm = 5.4
|Apr precipitation mm = 40.6
|May precipitation mm = 148.6
|Jun precipitation mm = 82.1
|Jul precipitation mm = 66.2
|Aug precipitation mm = 126.2
|Sep precipitation mm = 158.9
|Oct precipitation mm = 134.3
|Nov precipitation mm = 28.4
|Dec precipitation mm = 4.8
| year precipitation mm = 804.0
| unit precipitation days = 1.0 mm
|Jan precipitation days = 0.6
|Feb precipitation days = 0.4
|Mar precipitation days = 0.6
|Apr precipitation days = 3.2
|May precipitation days = 9.5
|Jun precipitation days = 6.8
|Jul precipitation days = 5.9
|Aug precipitation days = 9.3
|Sep precipitation days = 11.0
|Oct precipitation days = 8.5
|Nov precipitation days = 2.6
|Dec precipitation days = 0.7
|year precipitation days = 59.0
|source 1 = World Meteorological Organization{{cite web
| url = https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/archive/arc0216/0253808/1.1/data/0-data/Region-2-WMO-Normals-9120/Myanmar/CSV/Sagaing_48039.csv
| title = World Meteorological Organization Climate Normals for 1991–2020
| publisher = World Meteorological Organization
| access-date = 16 October 2023}}
|source 2 = Meteomanz(record since 2014){{Cite web |url=http://www.meteomanz.com/sy3?l=1&cou=2050&ind=48039&m1=01&y1=2009&m2=06&y2=2024 |title=NAJAF - Weather data by month |access-date=28 June 2024 |website=meteomanz}}
}}
People
- Sithu Kyawhtin, King of Ava (1552–1555)
- Zhu Youlang, Prince of Gui, last Ming Dynasty claimant to China, lived in exile at Sagaing in 1661
- Maurice Collis, author of Trials in Burma, district commissioner of the Sagaing district in 1928
- Tom Mitford, brother of the Mitford Sisters, was killed while serving with the Devonshire Regiment at Sagaing in 1945.
- Zaw Hlaing Thein, politician
Places of interest
The Kaunghmudaw Pagoda (Burmese: {{Lang|my|ကောင်းမှုတော် ဘုရား}} {{IPA|[káʊɴ m̥ṵ dɔ̀ pʰəjá]}}; Yaza Mani Sula Kaunghmudaw ({{Lang|my|ရာဇမဏိစူဠာ ကောင်းမှုတော်}}); Pali: Rājamaṇicūḷā) is a large pagoda on the northwestern outskirts of Sagaing.
Images
File:Sagaing Hill.jpg|Sagaing Hill
File:Sagaing, Myanmar.jpg|Irrawaddy River from Sagaing Hill, Sagaing
File:Sagaing, Buddhist stupas, Myanmar.jpg|Pagodas
File:Sagaing, Buddhist monks, Myanmar.jpg|Buddhist monks
File:Sagaing, View, Myanmar.jpg|Viewpoint at Sagaing Hill
File:Sagaing2.jpg|Pagodas dotting Sagaing's landscape
File:U Min Thonze exterior, Sagaing, Sagaing Division, Burma.jpg|U Min Thonze cave
File:Sone Oo Pone Nya Shin Pagoda.jpg|Sone Oo Pone Nya Shin Pagoda, Sagaing Hill
File:Umin Thonze Pagoda.JPG|U Min Thonze Pagoda
File:Two bridges of Sagaing.jpg|The Ava and Yadanabon bridges, connecting Sagaing and Mandalay
File:Sagaing hill.jpg|Panoramic view from top of Sagaing Hill
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
{{s-start}}
{{s-hou|}}
{{s-bef|before=Pinya}}
{{s-ttl|title=Capital of Sagaing Kingdom|years=June 1315 – April 1364}}
{{s-aft|after=End of Kingdom}}
{{s-bef|before=New Kingdom}}
{{s-ttl|title=Capital of Ava Kingdom|years=April – September 1364}}
{{s-aft|after=Pinya}}
{{s-bef|before=Shwebo}}
{{s-ttl|title=Capital of Burma|years=26 July 1760 – 23 July 1765}}
{{s-aft|after=Ava}}
{{s-end}}
{{Commons category|Sagaing}}
{{EB1911 Poster|Sagaing}}
[http://www.sagainguni.edu.mm/?page_id=1752&lang=en]
{{Authority control}}
Category:Township capitals of Myanmar