Janjira: the island whose other name is Abyssinia

The route

• The Konkan holds seventeen rows in the whole site universe and is one of the thinnest regions in it. That is an upstream research problem, not a fact about the coast (ecosystem rule 3).
• Page numbers are not given for this volume: the scan runs to nearly two million characters and its running heads do not survive the OCR reliably.
• The 1883 gazetteer's characterisations of the Siddis are a colonial administrator's and are used here only for etymology, geography and a dated census figure.
• No logistics in these records have been checked by a person. Fares, hours, fees and the safety and hassle scores are deliberately empty rather than estimated. That is Phase 3's work, not a gap to be filled from a desk.

1. 1

   Janjira Fort (Murud-Janjira) جزیرہ قلعہ

   fort · 2 hr · 18.3000, 72.9642

   Stand here. On the boat, in the Rajpuri gulf, before you land. The fort has to be read from the water — that is the whole point of where it is.

   A name that means island, and a coast that means Abyssinia

   What the board says: That Murud-Janjira was the seat of the Siddi rulers and was never taken.

   The Bombay gazetteer of 1883 opens its account with the etymology, and it is the whole story in one line: 'Janjira, that is the island, also called Habsan, that is the Habshi's or African's land'. The name is Arabic jazira, island, worn down by Marathi; the alternative name says who held it.

   The territory was not a fort but a state — about 325 square miles, a population of 76,300 at the 1881 census, forty miles of coast from the Roha river in the north to the Savitri in the south, administered in eight tappas. The great Rajpuri gulf runs fourteen miles south-east from the island and divides the whole into a northern and a southern half.

   The gazetteer records that the Siddis, described as soldiers of fortune, were found only on Janjira island, and that certain families in the fortress held office by inheritance. It also records what the fort meant to everyone else on this coast: Shivaji ordered a fleet fitted out in imitation of the Janjira Siddis and built as a safeguard against them, and in 1672 a Siddi and Mughal squadron landed troops in his territory. An African-descended Muslim dynasty holding an island against the Marathas and the Portuguese for two centuries is a story no other region in this archive can tell.

   The crossing is the trip. Sailings, cost and sea conditions were not established by this research and are the first thing to settle.

What is not known here

Every stop on this trail has its logistics recorded as unverified, which means this page will not show you an opening time, a fare or a safety score. That is deliberate. Nobody has walked this route or telephoned anybody for these records, and a number invented at a desk is worse than no number on precisely the questions where being wrong costs the reader something.

• Page numbers are not given: this volume's scan runs to nearly two million characters and its running heads do not survive the OCR reliably. The passages were located by text search within the identified volume and the exact printed pages are unconfirmed.
• The gazetteer's characterisation of the Siddis is a colonial administrator's, written about a state his government was managing. It is used here for the etymology, the geography and the dated census figure, and not for its judgements about people.
• Nothing here establishes how the island fort is reached today, at what cost, or in what sea conditions. The boat is the entire logistics problem at this stop and it is unresearched.