Gingee

Gingee is dominated by a great fortress spread across three rocky hills in the Tamil country. Walls join the natural heights, enclosing temples, granaries and other buildings that supported a garrison. Its formidable defences made it a stronghold sought by successive powers, from the Nayaks to the Marathas and the Mughals.

Shivaji’s forces took Gingee in 1677. After his son Rajaram fled the Mughal advance in western India, the fort became a refuge and a centre of Maratha resistance. Mughal forces under Zulfiqar Khan besieged it for years, but Rajaram escaped before the fortress fell in 1698. During the eighteenth-century Carnatic wars, French troops captured Gingee in 1750. Its successive sieges made the isolated hills a prominent part of the struggle for power across southern India.