Place · hill fort · India
Torna Fort
The Sahyadri fort at Torna (also called Prachandagad) in Pune district, Maharashtra, 50 kilometres from Pune — the first fort captured by the 16-year-old Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in 1646 from the Bijapur Sultanate forces, marking the start of the Maratha swarajya campaign. The fort was built by the Bahmani Sultanate in the 13-century and strengthened under the Yadava and Nizam Shahi periods. At 1,403 metres, Torna is one of the highest forts in the Sahyadris. The adjacent Rajgad Fort (10 kilometres away) became Shivaji's first capital after 1646, before the shift to Raigad in 1656. The Torna complex preserves the Zunjar Machi (fighter plateau), the Budhla Machi, and the Toran Devi temple. The Monsoon-season Torna trek is one of Maharashtra's most popular hiking routes. ASI protection since 1909.
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Patron dynasty
- Maratha
- Tradition
- Deccan archaeology and Maratha history
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 18.280, 73.620
Connections (1)
- Shivaji campaignRaigad
Torna, seized about 1646, was the first fort the teenage Shivaji took — the beginning of a career built on the Sahyadri forts, of which he eventually held something like three hundred. Raigad, forty kilometres away, became the capital and the site of the 1674 coronation at which he was enthroned as Chhatrapati by a Banaras pandit brought south for the purpose, because the Maharashtrian Brahmins would not perform it.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Torna Fort”. The Maratha bakhar literature and Peshwa Daftar records; Stewart Gordon, The Marathas 1600–1818.
Open Torna Fort in the repository →