Janjira Fort (Murud)
Interesting facts
- In its heyday the fort is said to have mounted more than 500 cannons along its walls.
- Kalaal Baangadi is considered the third-largest cannon in India; two other giant guns, Chavri and Landa Kasam, also guarded the walls.
- The fortified island covers an area of about 22 acres.
- In 1676 the Maratha Peshwa Moropant Pingle attacked with about 10,000 soldiers and was driven back.
- Sambhaji's 1682 siege collapsed when a Mughal army attacked the Maratha homeland and forced him to pull his troops away.
- In 1736 the Marathas defeated the Siddis near Rewas, killing their leader Siddi Sat, and a treaty confined the Siddis to Janjira and two other forts.
- The town of Murud was once known in Marathi as Habsan, a name that referred to its Abyssinian rulers.
- The Janjira rulers also kept Ghosalgad, a hill fort about 32 km inland, as a military outpost.
Why it is worth it
Murud-Janjira rises straight out of the Arabian Sea off the Konkan coast of Maharashtra, an oval island entirely enclosed by grey stone walls about twelve metres high, with a ring of massive rounded bastions that seem to grow from the rock. From the shore at Rajapuri it looks almost unbroken, and that is by design: the main gate faces the mainland but is set so deep between two bastions that it only becomes visible when a boat is a few metres away. A small postern on the seaward side, the Darya Darwaza, gave the garrison a way out to open water. On the wall beside the main gate a carved panel shows a tiger-like beast gripping elephants in its claws.
The name comes from the Arabic jazira, "island". Tradition holds that local Koli fishermen first built a wooden stockade on the rock as protection against pirates; after it was taken by a general of the Ahmadnagar Sultanate, a stone fortress replaced it. By the 17th century the fort had passed to the Siddis, a dynasty of Abyssinian descent whose admirals ruled from here as the Nawabs of Janjira and kept a strong navy, at times sailing in alliance with the Mughals. Janjira's fame rests on its record under them: the Portuguese, the English and the Marathas all tried to take it and failed. Shivaji's forces could not scale the walls; his son Sambhaji besieged the island in 1682 and tried to build a causeway of rock across the channel, but had to withdraw. To watch it, the Marathas built their own sea fort, Padmadurg, on a nearby islet. Janjira was never taken by force and passed to India only after 1947.
Inside the walls, the fort was a small town: the ruins of barracks, officers' quarters, a mosque and a palace lie among grass and trees, and two large stone-lined tanks still hold fresh water, a remarkable thing in the middle of the sea. The bastions still carry old cannon of Indian and European make, the largest of them, known as Kalaal Baangadi, said to weigh over 22 tonnes. From the top of the walls the view runs across the surf to the wooded Konkan hills and the Nawab's later palace above Murud. The fort is protected by the Archaeological Survey of India.
Getting there
Janjira lies off Rajapuri, about 4 km south of the town of Murud and some 165 km south of Mumbai; the nearest larger town inland is Roha, about 22 km away. The nearest airport is Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMI), about 77 km away in a straight line. Traditional sailboats take visitors across from the Rajapuri jetty.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Murud-Janjira is the local name of a fort and tourist attraction situated on an island just off the coastal town of Murud, in the Raigad district of Maharashtra, India. Malik Ambar is credited with the construction of Janjira Fort in the Murud area of present-day Maharashtra India. After its construction in 1567 AD, the fort was key to the Sidis withstanding various invasion attempts by the Marathas, Mughals, and Portuguese to capture Janjira.
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