Battle of Umrani

01Bahlol Khan surrounded

In 1673 Shivaji retook Panhala from Bijapur, and Bahlol Khan, an Afghan noble of Bijapur, marched to recover it. Prataprao Gujar, Shivaji’s sarnaubat, came up with the Maratha cavalry and caught him near Umrani. The Marathas did not attack the Bijapuri lines head on. They surrounded the camp and held the only water, a lake, and in the April heat the Bijapur army was soon in distress. Bahlol Khan sent to ask for terms.

02Mercy and its price

Bahlol Khan promised never to make war on Shivaji again, and Prataprao let him march away with his army. Shivaji was furious that an enemy army had been released when it could have been destroyed, and wrote ordering Prataprao not to show his face until he had beaten Bahlol Khan. Within months Bahlol Khan broke his word and came again. In February 1674 at Nesari, stung by the rebuke, Prataprao charged him with only six companions and they were all killed.

Dynasty · 1674–1848 CE (Swarajya from the 1640s)Maratha Chhatrapatis (Bhonsle)Shivaji Bhonsle built a Hindu kingdom out of hill forts in the Sahyadri and was crowned Chhatrapati at Raigad in 1674. His sons and his daughter-in-law Tarabai held it through twenty-seven years of war with Aurangzeb, and the state they saved became the Maratha power that ruled much of India in the eighteenth century.Read →