Place · Mysorean star fort · India
Manjarabad Star Fort, Sakleshpur
Also known as Manjarabad Star Fort, Sakleshpur, Tipu Sultan's star fort
A Tipu Sultan fort of 1792 on a hilltop in the Bisle ghat, built to a strict eight-pointed star plan with a European bastioned trace and a single arched entrance, commanding the pass down to Mangalore. It is the clearest example in India of a Vauban-derived plan built by an Indian ruler for his own purposes.
- Date
- 1792
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 12.950, 75.750
Worth knowing
The shape is only legible from the air, which is how most people now see it, and the fort has no water source of its own beyond a rock-cut tank in the courtyard. Tipu is said to have chosen the site because the sea at Mangalore, eighty kilometres away, is visible from it on a clear morning.
Connections (1)
- Craft tradition ofSrirangapatna / Srirangapattana
Manjarabad's eight-pointed star and Srirangapatna's re-bastioned river walls were both laid out by French engineers in Mysore's service, and they are the clearest Indian adoption of the European bastioned trace. Tipu paid for the expertise and used it for his own purposes; the 1799 assault then proved that a European plan without a European siege train behind it was not enough.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Manjarabad Fort”. Mysore Gazetteer, ed. C. Hayavadana Rao (1927); Archaeological Survey of India, Bengaluru circle records.
Open Manjarabad Star Fort, Sakleshpur in the repository →