Sirpur

Sirpur lies in the wooded country near the Wardha and Pranhita rivers, on the northern edge of the Deccan. Its fort is associated with the Gond kings whose dominion later centred on Chanda. A local tradition remembers Bhim Ballal Singh as an early ruler with his seat at Sirpur, though the dates assigned to the founding of the kingdom are uncertain.

The fortified place appears in accounts of the early fourteenth-century campaign of Malik Kafur against the Kakatiya kingdom. Over subsequent centuries the Gond kingdom and its neighbours contested the region. In the eighteenth century Maratha power displaced the Gond rulers of Chanda, and the lands around Sirpur were drawn into agreements between the Bhonsles and the Nizam of Hyderabad. The fort remained a reminder of the older Gond presence in this riverine frontier.