Place · battle · India
Salher
The February 1672 battle at Salher in Nashik district, Maharashtra, where Shivaji's generals Prataprao Gujar and Moropant Pingle decisively defeated a Mughal army commanded by Mahabat Khan — the first Maratha victory over the Mughals in open pitched battle rather than hill or guerilla warfare. The Marathas had previously fought the Mughals through night raids, fort defence and hit-and-run tactics; Salher demonstrated the Maratha ability to defeat Mughal field armies in conventional engagement. The 40,000-strong Maratha force decisively routed the 20,000 Mughal cavalry and captured 125 elephants, 6,000 horses and tons of baggage. The victory accelerated Shivaji's recovery of the Baglana forts and preceded his 1674 coronation at Raigad.
- Date
- 1672 CE
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 20.730, 73.940
Connections (3)
- Succession in timePratapgad
Pratapgad in 1659 was an ambush that killed a general in a negotiating tent; Salher in 1672 was a pitched battle in the open against a Mughal army, and the Marathas won it. Thirteen years separate a hill chief's coup from a state's conventional victory, and the coronation at Raigad comes two years after Salher — the sequence is deliberate and it is how a raiding power made itself a kingdom.
- Imperial administration ofSindhudurg
Salher in 1672 was the first Maratha victory over a Mughal army in open pitched battle rather than in the hills, and it came in the same decade as the building of Sindhudurg. The two together are the point at which the Maratha state stops being a mobile raiding power and becomes a conventional one, with a fleet, a coastline, sea forts and the ability to fight in the field — and then crowns its founder in 1674.
- Succession in timeRaigad
Salher in February 1672 and the coronation at Raigad in June 1674 are two years apart, and the second follows from the first. Once Maratha troops had beaten a Mughal field army in open battle, the claim to be a sovereign Hindu kingdom rather than a Bijapuri jagir could be staged as a consecration with Vedic rites and a new calendar.
On these journeys
Sources
List of wars in the Indian subcontinent; standard reference accounts
Open Salher in the repository →