Fort Janjira

Murud-Janjira is the local name for a fort situated at the coastal village of Murud, in the Raigad district of Maharashtra, India.^[1] It is famous for being the only fort along India's western coast that remained undefeated despite Maratha, Dutch and English East India Company attacks.

The fort was built by the Koli (Fishermen) kings of Konkan and repelled all the attacks of Muslim rulers for almost two hundred years (till 1490). The subedar of Junnar, Mallik Ambar also tried to capture the fort in vain in 1485-86. Finally around 1490, he secretly sent a warship disguised as a merchant ship with 147 Habashi soldiers. The ship's crew asked for refuge in the fort. The officer at the time, Etbatrao, agreed and took the ship in. The Habashi general, pretending to be a merchant gave liquor to the Koli soldiers. Habashi soldiers hiding in the goods containers attacked and defeated the intoxicated Koli soldiers. The fort previously in habshi hands passed to the authority of the Siddis, the Siddis engaged largely in protecting their trade routes to the African coast, the Red Sea and the Middle East, formed alliances with the Bahamani Sultan of Ahmednagar and the Habshi and Siddi states inside India, such as that of Malik Ambar (1550-1626). Before the rise of the Maratha sardars, the courts of the Bahamani sultanates were rent by rivalry between the Indian Muslims and the foreign Muslims, as a result of which, the Sultans began to patronize the Marathas as a third force, leading to the rise of Shivaji and the Maratha Empire.