Murud-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.
Origins of the name
The word Janjira is not native to India, and may have originated after the Arabic word Jazeera, which means an island. Murud was once known in Marathi as Habsan, or Abyssinian's land. Some of the peoples also splits the name as "JAL JEERA" meaning fort in the water.
The name of the fort is a concatenation of the Konkani and Arabic words for Island, "morod" and "jazeera".The word "morod" is peculiar to Konkani and is absent in Marathi.Thus, during the rains, the fields get flooded,but the morods never flood.The State of Murud-Janjira was known to the Maratha Empire as Habsan,the land of the Habshis.
History
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.
Malik Amber initially rose to great prominence as the Prime Minister of Ahmednagar. He is credited with having carried out a systematic revenue settlement of major portions of the Deccan, which formed the basis for many subsequent settlements. When the Ahmadnagar kingdom was conquered by Bijapur and the Mughals in alliance, the Siddis switched their allegiance to the Sultanate of Bijapur; when the Bijapur kingdom was conquered by the Mughal Empire, the Habshis switched their allegiance to the Mughal Empire. The Siddis juggled their alliances, while intervening politically and diplomatically to decrease the political intrigue between their allies in the interior.
As allies of these Muslim states, the Siddis acted often in conjunction with their navies, and fulfilled the role of defending Muslim interests in the sea, and particularly, access by sea for the Hajj and Umrah,and trade. For this reason, the Siddis guarded their independence from the political intrigues of their allies, despite the powerful roles the Habshis and Siddis as rulers, governors and kingmakers in the interior.
The Siddis remained independent, and due to their strategic position, the coastal shipping remained subject to their protection or disruption. This vulnerability to the Siddi princely state's naval power provoked various local powers to attempt to conquer the islands, but despite efforts by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and the Marathas, the fort was never conquered. The fort thus earned a reputation for being impregnable. Mass mobilizations by the English and Marathas were always forced off before they could complete the task by the intervention of another power, such as the Mughals, creating a diversion in order to prevent the fall of Murud-Janjira. It must be noted that the same happened with Goa, with the Mughals invading Maratha lands in order to divert Maratha attempts to conquer Goa.
Ruins of the queens palace at Murud-Janjira
The founder of what later developed into the Maratha Empire, Shivaji Bhosale, sent his Prime Minister or Peshwa, Moropant Pingle to conquer the Siddis during August, 1676, albeit unsuccessfully. Shivaji's inability to capture this fort led him to build the Vijaydurg fort down the coast, and also a fort named Sindhudurg on the island of Padmagad, near the town of Malvan. The Siddis power remained undiminished. Further attempts were made by the Marathas to conquer the Siddi principality, but in vain.[citation needed]
The English tried to suppress the Siddis, and the Siddis on occasion projected their power by invading the coast, for example they seized Bombay, overwhelming the English garrison, before pulling back to their fort. As the Muslim and Maratha powers of the interior waned in the face of rising English power, the Siddi state signed a treaty with England. HH Nawab Sidi Muhammed Khan II Sidi Ahmad Khan was the last Ruler of Murud-Janjira. A patron of arts and culture, he supported such musicians as Beenkar Abid Hussain Khan. The state continued in this condition until late 1947, when the last prince acceded his state to the Indian Union, and his state was merged into the Bombay Presidency which was later transformed into the State of Bombay and the State of Maharashtra
Major features
Sambhaji Maharaj (Son of Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj)constructed a fort on a nearby island (Padamdurg Fort, now known as Kasa). Kasa fort is not accessible to the public and requires special permission from the Navy.
To Reach the Janjira Fort, sailboats are available from Murud Port (which is behind Ekdara Village) and Rajpuri port.
Murud doesn't just have a Beach & the fort. It also has a Temple over the hill next to the New Bus Depot (known as Datta cha Dongar) Hill of Lord Dattatray. One can have a paranormic view of Murud & both the islands together from the hill.
further ahead of the hill is an idga, the walk though the dense jungle is a experience in itself.
