01The Siddis’ island
Koli fishermen of Rajapuri are said to have first built a wooden stockade on the rock against pirates. The Nizam Shahi sultans of Ahmadnagar took it, and their Abyssinian officers raised a stone fort with walls some twelve metres high and twenty-six round bastions, its main gate hidden until a boat is close. The Siddis made it their own and became admirals for whoever paid them, first Bijapur, then the Mughals, who gave them a large subsidy. From Janjira their ships raided the Konkan villages and carried off people, and for the Marathas the island was a thorn in the side of their coast for a century.
02Sieges that failed
Shivaji tried more than once to take Janjira. In 1676 his Peshwa Moropant Pingle led some ten thousand men against it, and ladders were set to the walls, but the attack failed. Shivaji then built the sea fort of Padmadurg on a rock to the north-west to watch the island. In January 1682 Sambhaji besieged it and tried to fill the channel with stones to make a causeway, but a Mughal invasion of his own country called him away. In April 1736 Chimaji Appa’s army beat the Siddis at Rewas, where their leader Siddi Sat was killed, and the peace that followed shut them up in Janjira and a few posts. The island itself was never taken. The Nawab’s state joined India in 1948, and the empty fort is reached by sailboat from Rajapuri.
The life of this place
- 1676Shivaji’s army under Moropant Pingle assaults Janjira and fails; Padmadurg is begun.
- January 1682Sambhaji besieges Janjira and tries to build a causeway.
- 19 April 1736Chimaji Appa defeats the Siddis at Rewas.
- 1948Janjira state merges with India.
Boats leave from Rajapuri jetty near Murud; the sea is closed to them in the monsoon months.
