Murud-Janjira is the local name for a fort situated at the coastal village of Murud, in the Raigad district of Maharashtra, India. It is famous for being the only fort along India's western coast that remained undefeated despite Maratha, Dutch and English East India Company attacks.
Origins of the name
The word Janjira is not native to India, and may have originated after the Arabic word Jazeera, which means an island. Similarly, the Marathi word Habshi refers to "habes" an afro-asiatic word meaning lion, its origin is thought to be from the word the "lion of judah", this term came to refer to judaic-christian cushtic people of the horn of africa[vague][citation needed]. Murud was once known in Marathi as Habsan, or Abyssinian's land.
The name of the fort is a concatenation of the Konkani and Arabic words for Island, "morod" and "jazeera". The word "morod" is peculiar to Konkani and is absent in Marathi. In Goa, the word is now more generally used for those parts of the village which were originally dry land as against the fields, which were swamps. Thus, during the rains, the fields get flooded, but the morods never flood. The State of Murud-Janjira was known to the Maratha Empire as Habsan, the land of the Habshis.
The term Siddi is an expression of respectful address commonly used in North Africa. The ruler of the Habshi state of Murud-Janjira was known as the Siddi. The Siddis or Sayyids refers to the descendants of Prophet Muhammed that were integrated into cushtic peoples and occupied in particular the Somaliland coast.
How to Reach: Murud is 170 km away from Mumbai, on the Konkan Coast. To reach Murud one has to travel by road, via Alibaug or Roha or take a ferry from Gateway to Mandwa, near Alibaug and travel about 50 kms by road...more on Murud Jazeera
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