Dabhol

Dabhol, or Dabul, lies on the Vashishti River, a tidal creek that cuts through the Konkan coast and gave the town a sheltered harbour. It was one of the great ports of the Deccan, where goods from the Bahmani and Bijapur kingdoms came down to the Arabian Sea and ships from the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea arrived. Muslim merchants made up much of its trade.

The Russian traveller Afanasy Nikitin, who visited in the early 1470s, found a large town and extensive seaport where horses from Arabia, Khorasan and Mysore were landed for sale. Dabul had links with all the major ports from India to Ethiopia. This importance brought Portuguese attention: in December 1508 a fleet under Francisco de Almeida bombarded and sacked it, though the fort held out. The Portuguese tried to destroy the port several times in the following decades, and the last recorded attack came in 1571. Around 1660 Shivaji conquered Dabul and added it to his Maratha kingdom.