Place · sea fort · India
Vijaydurg
The oldest of the Maratha sea forts, on a headland with water on three sides, taken from Bijapur by Shivaji in 1653 and given a triple wall and a submerged rock barrier laid across its approach channel to break the keels of ships that did not know the water. Kanhoji Angre and his successors ran the Maratha navy from it.
- Date
- 1653 onward
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Patron dynasty
- Maratha
- Tradition
- Deccan archaeology and Maratha history
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 16.560, 73.340
Worth knowing
The Angres levied their own passes on European shipping for some forty years, which is the Portuguese cartaz system turned back on its inventors, and the Company paid rather than fight them. An 1898 expedition observed a solar eclipse from the fort and the spectral line recorded there led to the identification of helium, which had not been found on earth.
Connections (2)
- Alternative toMurud-Janjira
Janjira and Vijaydurg are eighty kilometres apart on the same coast and were never held by the same power. The Siddis of Janjira, of Abyssinian descent and nominally Mughal admirals, held their rock against every Maratha attempt; Shivaji and then the Angres built the Maratha navy from Vijaydurg and levied passes on European shipping. Two maritime states inside one sixty-mile stretch of Konkan.
- In the same set asSindhudurg
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
- The Maratha military landscape
- UNESCO World Heritage — cultural
- The Indian Ocean World — the whole rim
- Forts of the south & Deccan
Sources
Wikipedia, “Vijaydurg Fort”. Sabhasad Bakhar; Norman Lockyer's reports on the 1898 Vijaydurg eclipse expedition; UNESCO nomination file for the Maratha Military Landscapes of India (2025).
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