The final leg of our travel back in time took in the ‘impregnable’ fort of Janjira.

Pushkar Sohoni, who is an architectural and cultural historian and associate professor and the chair of the department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune has written an informative article about it in ‘African Rulers and Generals in India (Afro-South Asia in the Global African Diaspora, vol. 1)’ as a contribution to University of North Carolina Ethiopian and East African Studies Project; Ahmedabad Sidi Heritage and Educational Center, 2020.

Another useful resource was the 1993 Goa University PhD thesis of Raghuraj Singh Chauhan, ‘Siddis of Janjira and the Portuguese’ under the guidance of Dr. P. P. Shirodkar.

Janjira fort was the stronghold of Janjira state, which was ruled by the ethnic group of administrator-warriors of East African descent called the Siddis. Starting as nobles in the courts of the NizamShahs of Ahmadnagar and serving them for over a hundred years, the Siddis eventually created an independent kingdom, centred around this island fort. They ruled over this sovereign state for over three hundred years, from 1621 to 1948. Sohori calls the fort “a palimpsest of almost five hundred years of the history of the Deccan coast.”

Siddis (also known as Habshis, or Abyssinians) originally came as military slaves, merchants, sailors, and mercenaries from East Africa, most probably the highlands of Ethiopia, according to Sohoni.

The fortified island itself was called Habsan (Persian for ‘Abyssinians’), or Murud-Janjira (a concatenation of the words for island in two languages, Murud in Konkani and Jazeera in Arabic), while the name Janjira, sometimes used for the island, also refers to the entire independent kingdom.

I found the word associations interesting. The Konkani word, often used derogatorily for a black person (which caused such a storm when a minister used it some years ago) is believed to have come from the Portuguese ‘Caffre’ (which in turn is a corruption of the Arabic ‘kaffir’ for non-believer), but could it just as possibly be derived from ‘Habshi’?

Also, I’ve never come across ‘Murud’ as the Konkani word for ‘island’. It seems so far removed phonetically from ‘zuem’, which I know. Could it be that another word for ‘island’ is/was used elsewhere on the Konkan coast?

Lastly, I hadn’t known before that ‘Janjira’ was derived from ‘jazeera’, meaning ‘peninsula’ or ‘island.’ It explains the rationale for the name of Al Jazeera media network, based in the Qatar peninsula.   

Sohoni points out that Janjira was one only two princely states (the other being Sachin, in modern-day Gujarat) that was directly ruled by Siddis. Succession to the throne was decided by election and not merely by bloodline. Furthermore, Janjira “was the only Indian kingdom which was militarily based off the mainland and relied on its naval prowess rather than its territorial forces. Hence, the architectural importance of the fort of Janjira cannot be overstated, both as an exemplar of naval fortification, but also as one of the few sites that could resist all the major imperial powers of early modern South Asia.”  

Reading these sources as well as Dr. P. S. Pissurlencar’s ‘Portuguese Maratha relations’, in which the Siddi of Janjira figure several times, the word ‘frenemy’ comes to mind. One’s head begins to spin keeping pace with the numerous skirmishes on land and sea, bipartite or even tripartite ‘friendship’ treaties of mere convenience that were either loosely adhered to or ignored, or even betrayed, territories won and lost at various times particularly in the seventeenth century among the many ‘players’ along the Konkan coast: the Nizamshahs of Ahmednagar, Adilshahs of Bijapur, the Dutch, British, Portuguese, Marathas, Mughals and the Siddi of Janjira.

As we approached the fort by sailboat from Rajapuri jetty nearby, one got a sense of the ingenuity of its builders. Its walls skirt all along the edges of the 22-acre island.

The main entrance gate that faces Rajapuri is so well hidden that it only became visible when our boat was in very close proximity, a few metres away. 

  

You have to step lively off the boat (and safely stash phones and cameras lest they fall irretrievably into the water) onto the narrow strip of beach that hugs the fort’s rampart walls and walk gingerly up to the entrance gate.

The boatmen ferrying us there also doubled up as guides and gave us a dispassionate description and history of the fort in Hindi/Urdu on the 20-minute sail there.

A voluntary suggested donation for the guiding service was willingly given at the end of the trip by all on board save for a tiny group that chose to chant provocative slogans instead. They tried to incite the rest of us to join them but quickly ran out of steam when no-one took their bait.

 On the left bastion of the fort entrance is an engraving of a tiger battling six elephants, four under each of its claws one in its mouth, the last trapped in its tail,

a proclamation of royal sovereignty and military might.

As at the Kolaba fort, we had only a short time at Janjira before the boat took us back, so our exploration was a little hurried.

The excavation of two large freshwater cisterns not only provided basalt for building the fort but also year-round potable water for the fort-city.

Janjira’s fort bastions and walls stand proud, but the interior is in decay. One hope that its inaccessibility that defended it so well from marauders will also protect it from the onslaught of destructive tourism and misguided ‘development.’

As we returned to Alibag, we drove tantalisngly close to Korlai fort, also on my bucket list. But the sun and our energy levels were setting fast, so we beat a prudent retreat.

On returning to Goa a few days however, I was soon at another ‘island’ fort, Jua or Santo Estevam, my native village, on a walk led by architect Lester Silveira. The contrast with Janjira not only in size (Jua fort is minuscule; Kanekar sums it up in a page in her book ‘Portuguese sea forts: Goa with Chaul, Korlai and Vasai’),

but also in shape (Jua fort is angular, compared to the rounded curves of Janjira’s walls and bastions) were striking. Kanekar calls it “essentially a battlemented watchtower,” atop the island’s highest point, affording a wary vigil over possible attack by land or sea.  

The Directorate of Archives and Archaeology Goa information tells us it was erected in 1668 during the tenure of Viceroy João Nunes da Cunha, Conde de S. Vicente, and that Sambhaji captured it in 1683 but abandoned it soon after.

The fate of Portuguese Goa hung by a thread and our history might have been very different had circumstances allowed him to continue the siege of Goa.

Our short family trip with the unplanned visit to these forts made me widen my own reading of history and get a better perspective of our past from those vantage points.

 (An edited version of this article was published on 28 April 2024 in my weekend column ‘On the Upbeat’ in the Panorama section of the Navhind Times Goa India)