A History of the Mahrattas v2.c57.70

v2.c57.70

¹ [Chākan (Chakun) lies eighteen miles north of Poona. The fort is nearly square with bastioned fronts and corner towers. A portion of the outworks is said to be the remains of a fortification made in 1295 by an Abyssinian chief. In 1443 Chākan was the headquarters of Malik-ul-Tujar, the leading Bahmanī noble, who was ordered by Alā-ud-dīn II (1435–58) to reduce the Konkan forts. In 1486 Malik Ahmad, founder of the Ahmadnagar dynasty, seized the fort. In 1595 the fort was granted by the tenth Ahmadshāhī king to Mālojī Bhoslē, Sivājī’s grandfather. Shāyista Khān, the Mughal general, captured it in 1660, but Aurangzeb restored it to Sivājī in 1667, from which date until 1818 it remained in Marāthā possession. (B.G., xviii, pt. iii. 121; Sarkar, Shivaji and His Times, pp. 92–5.)]