Place · Maratha sea fort · India
Sindhudurg
Built by Shivaji between 1664 and 1667 on a rock off Malvan, with a wall that follows the outcrop so that no straight run of it can be enfiladed, a foundation bedded in molten lead, and a hidden entrance invisible from the sea. It is the clearest statement that the Maratha state intended to be a naval power and not only a hill one.
- Date
- 1664–1667
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Patron dynasty
- Maratha
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 16.040, 73.460
Worth knowing
Handprints and footprints said to be Shivaji's are set in lime on one of the bastions, and the fort holds the only temple in India dedicated to him, built by his son Rajaram. Three thousand masons are recorded as having worked on it for three years, and the walls have survived three and a half centuries of Arabian Sea monsoon.
Connections (4)
- Imperial administration ofRaigad
Shivaji's state was built on about three hundred forts and a navy, and the two were one system: hill forts that could not be starved out quickly because each held its own water, and sea forts like Sindhudurg built on island reefs to contest a coastline the Portuguese, Dutch and English all assumed was theirs. A power with no field army capable of meeting the Mughals in the open could still not be conquered, because there was nothing to conquer except rock.
- Imperial administration ofSalher
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.
- CampaignMurud-Janjira
Shivaji built Sindhudurg on a rock off Malvan in 1664 and tried repeatedly to take Janjira sixty kilometres north, and never did; nor did Sambhaji. The Siddis held their island against the Marathas, the Mughals, the Portuguese and the English for three centuries, which is why the Konkan's maritime history is not a single story about one power.
- In the same set asVijaydurg
Vijaydurg and Sindhudurg are the two ends of the Maratha navy: an older harbour fort given a triple wall and a submerged rock barrier across its approach, and a purpose-built island fort with no enfiladable wall and a hidden entrance. Both were inscribed in 2025 as components of the Maratha Military Landscapes, which is the first time that navy has been treated as heritage.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sindhudurg”. Sabhasad Bakhar; UNESCO nomination file for the Maratha Military Landscapes of India (2025).
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