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| Ahmednagar Fort |
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The Ahmednagar Fort is located in the heart of the city of
Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. It was the headquarters of the Ahmednagar Sultanate.
In 1803 it was taken by the British in during the Second Anglo-Maratha War. Later
it was used by the British Raj as a prison. Currently the fort is under the administration
of the Armoured Corps of the Indian Army
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Information
Built In:- 1494
Built by:- Malik Ahmad Shah I
Construction
materials:- Stone
Current
owner:- Indian Military
Open to
the public:- No
Controlled by :- Ahmednagar Sultanate, Mughals, Scindia, East India Company
Commanders Chand Bibi, Aurangzeb
Occupants :- Nana Phadanvis, Jawaharlal Nehru, Abul Kalam Azad, Sardar Patel
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In 1803 the Ahmednagar Fort was round in
appearance, with twenty-four bastions, one large gate, and three small sally ports.
It had a glacis, no covered way; a ditch, revetted with stone on both sides, about
18 feet (5.5 m) wide, with 9 feet (2.7 m) water all round, which only reached within
6 or 7 feet (2.1 m) of the top of the scarp; long reeds grew in it all round. The
berm was only about one yard wide. The rampart was of black hewn stone; the parapet
of brick in chunam, and both together appeared from the crest of the glacis to be
only as high as the pole of a field-officer's tent. The bastions were all about
4½ feet higher; they were round. One of them mounted eight guns en barbet: it pointed
to the eastward; all the rest had jingies, four in each.
In 1803 two guns were visible
in each bastion, and 200 were said to be ready in the fort to be mounted. A gun-shot
to the west of the fort was the Pettah of Ahmednagar. The main gate of the fort
faced the pettah, and was defended by a small half-circular work, with one traverse
and several little towers for men. There is was a wooden bridge over the ditch,
which could be taken away in time of war, but it was not a drawbridge. It was reported
that an iron trough as large as the bridge, could be placed upon it, or on the supporters
of it, and fill with charcoal or other combustibles, to which could be ignited as
an enemy approached.A small river came from the northward, round the west side
of the pettah, and passed to the southward of the fort. A nullah also passed from
the northward, between the fort and a town called Bhingar, about a gun-shot to the
eastward, and joined the river. A potential defensive weakness was a little hill
or rising ground close to and east of Bhingar, from which shot from siege guns could
reach the fort.
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Two nills or covered aqueducts came from
the hills, a mile or more to the north, passed through and supplied the pettah and
the town, and then went into the fort, either under or through the ditch, into which
the waste water fell. There were no passages across the ditch from the sally
ports, and no part of the aqueducts appeared above the ditch. The nullah mentioned
above, had steep banks and passed within 60 yards of the fort; the aqueduct from
Bhingar passed under it. There was no bridge or even a prominent crossing point
at the nullah and hence no clearly defined route between the fort and the town of
Bhingar. There were many small pagodas and mosques round the pettah and the fort,
but none exactly between, or between the fort and Bhingar, or nearer to the fort
than those towns.
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