Lohagad Fort: The Iron Fort, the Scorpion’s Tail and Nana Phadnavis’s Treasury

Lohagad Fort is a hill fort above the Indrayani valley near Lonavala in Pune district, Maharashtra, set on the range that once carried the high road to the Bor pass. It has no single builder. Its caves may go back to a Buddhist settlement two thousand years old, and it was already a Bahmani fort when it changed hands in 1489, long before Shivaji took it in 1648. It’s best known for the Vinchu Kata, a walled spur shaped like a scorpion’s tail, and since 2025 it has been one of the twelve forts of the Maratha Military Landscapes of India on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Lohagad usually gets filed as “a Shivaji fort” and studied as one hill. Both habits mislead. The fort was old when Shivaji arrived, and it changed hands again and again after him. It also never stood alone: its twin, Visapur, rises from the same plateau, and in March 1818 the British went for Visapur first because whoever held it could command Lohagad.

Where Lohagad is and what it is known for

Lohagad stands about four miles south of the Karla cave hills and eight miles south-east of Khandala, on the ridge that closes the Indrayani valley on the south. The state tourism department gives its height as 1,033 meters, and the usual way up still starts at Malavli station and passes the Bhaja caves. Its value was always the road below it: the old route between the Deccan and the Konkan by the Bor pass ran close under these hills.

Who held Lohagad before Shivaji

Lohagad was old long before the Marathas. The 19th-century Poona gazetteer argued that its rock-cut caves, plain and without inscriptions, look like the monk-dwellings of the Buddhist centers nearby, which it dated to between about 200 BC and AD 200. It even floated the idea that Lohagad might be Olochoera, a place the geographer Ptolemy listed around AD 150. Treat that last point as a possibility the gazetteer raised, not a finding.

The written record starts in the late 15th century. When Malik Ahmad broke away from the Bahmani kingdom to found the Nizam Shahi dynasty of Ahmadnagar, Lohagad was one of the Bahmani forts he took, in 1489. The oldest of its four gates probably dates from these Ahmadnagar kings.

The fort then served as a state prison. In 1564 Burhan Nizam Shah II, who later ruled Ahmadnagar from 1590 to 1594, was confined here during his brother’s reign. When the Ahmadnagar dynasty fell in the 1630s, Lohagad passed to the sultans of Bijapur.

How Lohagad changed hands under Shivaji and the Mughals

The direct answer: Shivaji took Lohagad from Bijapur in 1648, gave it up to the Mughals in 1665 and took it back in 1670. The fort then kept changing hands for another half-century. It helps to see the sequence in one place:

• 1648: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj wrests Lohagad from Bijapur.
• 1665: After the Mughal campaign of Mirza Raja Jai Singh and Dilawar Khan, Shivaji is forced to cede Lohagad to Aurangzeb under the Treaty of Purandar.
• 1670: In the run of successes that followed Tanaji Malusare’s capture of Sinhgad, the Marathas surprise Lohagad and make it a sub-divisional headquarters and treasury.
• About 1704: The gazetteer again records the Marathas taking it.
• 1713: Kanhoji Angria’s forces take it.
• 1720: It is given to the Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath.

The 1665 entry is the one aspirants remember, and it’s worth reading correctly. Purandar wasn’t a battlefield defeat at Lohagad. It was a negotiated surrender forced by a large Mughal army in the field, and Lohagad was one of the forts on the price list. That’s why the fort could be “lost” in 1665 without a shot being fired on its walls.

The 1704 entry also deserves a pause. A fort can only be taken if someone else holds it, so Lohagad must have slipped out of Maratha hands again during Aurangzeb’s long war in the Deccan. The gazetteer records the capture but not the earlier loss, so treat that gap as an inference from the record.

Nana Phadnavis, the treasury and the end in 1818

By the late 18th century Lohagad’s job had changed from guarding a road to guarding money. Around 1770 it was taken in the interest of Nana Phadnavis, the Peshwa’s chief minister, by a Koli outlaw named Javji Bomble. His rocket-men landed a rocket among powder near the door of the magazine, and the explosion forced the garrison out.

Nana then rebuilt the approach. The lowest gate and its bastion were among his additions around 1789, and a Marathi inscription on a stepped pond on the hilltop, dated to that year, names the builder as Balaji Janardan Bhanu (Nana’s own name) and his agent Dhondo Ballal Nitsure. That inscription is the best single piece of evidence for dating Nana’s work, better than any tradition about who built what.

Later, as chief minister under Bajirao II, Nana put a dependant of his own, Dhondopant, in command and sent his treasure to the fort. After Nana died in 1800, his widow took refuge on Lohagad on 12 November 1802, and Dhondopant refused to hand the fort to the Peshwa. General Wellesley mediated in 1803, first allowing Dhondopant to keep it and then threatening to storm it. Dhondopant retired to Thane, the widow to Panvel with a yearly allowance, and the fort went back to the Peshwa. When Lord Valentia visited in October 1803 he found it strongly garrisoned and poorly supplied.

The end came with the last war of the Maratha Empire. In 1818 Lohagad’s reputation made the British prepare a special force under Colonel Prother. It never had to fight for the fort. On 4 March 1818 Prother attacked Visapur, which was occupied the same day without resistance, and the next day Lohagad’s garrison walked out and the fort was taken without resistance.

Lohagad’s weakness fits in one sentence: the fort was strong, but it wasn’t the highest ground on its own plateau. The British blew up Visapur’s gates and left Lohagad’s four gateways standing, the gazetteer suggests, precisely because Lohagad could be commanded from Visapur at any time.

How Lohagad’s gates and the Vinchu Kata work

Lohagad has one entrance, and the builders spent their effort on making it a gauntlet. From the village of Lohvadi at the foot, a flight of steps, partly built and partly cut into the rock, winds up the face of a steep spur. It passes four arched gateways, each flanked by double bastions rising one above the other.

Walk it as an attacker would, with the dates that local tradition, as recorded in the gazetteer, gives each gate:

• Ganesh Gate, the lowest, built under Nana Phadnavis. Its teak doors, strengthened with iron, carried long iron spikes against elephants.
• Narayan Gate, also from Nana’s time.
• Hanumant Gate, the original gate of the fort. Local story credits Aurangzeb, but the gazetteer judged it at least as old as the Ahmadnagar kings.
• Maha Darwaza, the Great Gate, a plain wooden door in an arch, again from Nana’s rebuilding.

The trick is in the turns. The windings of the steps and the heights of the gateways were planned so that every bastion could fire on the approach. An attacker who forced one gate found himself in a narrow stretch of stair overlooked by the next, which is why a bastion, a projecting tower from which defenders can fire along the face of a wall, matters more here than wall thickness.

Not everyone was impressed. Lord Valentia argued in 1803 that the gateways actually weakened the fort, because each one gave a storming party a sheltered spot to regroup. It’s a fair objection. A series of gates slows an attacker down, but it also hands him a string of footholds.

The hilltop holds the fort’s civil life:

• A domed stone tomb without an inscription, which local story calls a cenotaph for Aurangzeb and a wife. The gazetteer records the story and no evidence for it.
• A large cave known as the treasury, with a row of treasure coffers sunk into its floor.
• The tomb of the saint Shaikh Umar, whose yearly fair drew Hindus of all castes as well as Muslims in the 19th century.
• A ruined temple of Trimbakeshwar Mahadev and the 1789 pond with Nana’s inscription.

Then there’s the Vinchu Kata, the scorpion’s tail, which the gazetteer calls the Scorpion’s Sting or Vichu-kanta. From the north-west corner of the hilltop an arched gateway leads down a rough descent of 100 to 150 feet onto a strip of rock about 1,500 yards long and twenty to forty yards broad. It has a flat top and steep sides strengthened with broad masonry parapets, and it ends in a fortified crag over the Avadholi valley.

Think of it as a walled balcony pushed out along the ridge. The comparison holds only so far: a balcony is for watching, and the spur was also a way of denying the ridge to anyone who wanted to set up guns on it, which is an inference from its shape rather than a stated purpose.

Visapur, the twin that decided 1818

Visapur rises from the same plateau, just north-east of Lohagad, and it’s the larger and higher of the two. The gazetteer’s aneroid reading put its highest point at 3,550 feet, and it describes a broad, bare hilltop ringed by walls that range from strong masonry on the easy slopes to dry-stone parapets above precipices. It is said to have been built by the Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath, who held office from 1713 to 1720. An iron gun on its north wall bears the Tudor rose and crown with the letters E. R., which the gazetteer took to be a gun of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, probably taken from an English ship.

Read the two forts together and 1818 makes sense. Lohagad had the better gates, but Visapur had the height.

Lohagad today: UNESCO, ASI and the visitor load

Lohagad was inscribed on the World Heritage List on 11 July 2025, at the 47th session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris, as one of the twelve components of the Maratha Military Landscapes of India, India’s 44th World Heritage property. On the UNESCO list it’s component 1739-003, covering 26.6 hectares with a buffer zone of 14,382.72 hectares, and the 2025 nomination groups it with the hill forts. The site’s current-affairs note on the inscription covers the whole set, and the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India guide places it in India’s list.

UNESCO recognized the twelve forts under two criteria. Criterion (iv) treats them as an outstanding example of a building ensemble that illustrates a significant stage in history, here a fort system adapted to the Western Ghats and the coast. Criterion (vi) ties them directly to events and living traditions of outstanding universal significance.

Notice what the listing leaves out. The UNESCO table names Lohagad but lists no separate entry for Visapur, even though the two worked as one position and fell together. A student who has read the 1818 story should find that boundary interesting.

Lohagad is an ASI monument, one of the eight components under the Archaeological Survey of India. It is also busy. ASI’s ticket figures for 2024-25 record 138,657 visitors at Lohgad Fort, against 341,086 at Raigad and 189,001 at the Karla Buddhist caves nearby. That’s a lot of feet on a monsoon staircase built for defense, and the visitor load is the practical conservation question the inscription now sharpens.

How to study Lohagad for exams

Lohagad connects two parts of the syllabus that are usually studied apart: the Deccan sultanates and the Maratha state in medieval history, and the Peshwa collapse of 1818 in modern history. In art and culture it’s a component of the 2025 World Heritage listing, and its caves tie it to the Buddhist rock-cut sites around Karla and Bhaja.

The Maratha thread is asked in just this form. History Optional 2025 Paper I set the question “Critically examine the political, military and administrative factors that led to the transformation of the Maratha character in the 18th century. How did these changes influence its rise and eventual decline?” Lohagad tracks that transformation on one hill, from Shivaji’s frontier garrison of 1648 to a minister’s treasury guarded by a private commander, and then to a surrender without a shot in 1818. In Prelims, 94 of the 1,403 questions from 2013 to 2026 in our Prelims question bank are tagged art and culture, about one in fifteen, so the UNESCO component and the ASI status are worth a line in your notes.

The facts worth carrying into revision:

• Taken by Malik Ahmad of Ahmadnagar in 1489, among the Bahmani forts.
• Taken by Shivaji in 1648, ceded to the Mughals in 1665 at Purandar, retaken in 1670.
• Local tradition dates three of the four gates to Nana Phadnavis; the Hanumant Gate is the original.
• The Vinchu Kata is a walled spur about 1,500 yards long, not a separate fort.
• The 1789 pond inscription dates Nana’s building work on the fort.
• In 1818 Visapur fell first, on 4 March, and Lohagad followed the next day.
• ASI protected and UNESCO component 1739-003 since 2025.

The confusions are predictable. Lohagad and Visapur get merged into one fort, or Visapur gets credited to Shivaji, when the gazetteer ties it to Balaji Vishwanath. The spelling varies too: the 2025 PIB release writes Lohgad. And the “iron fort” name tempts people to imagine iron walls, when the strength was the rock and the staircase.

A comparison with its siblings keeps the details from blurring. For a contrast outside the Maratha system, Daulatabad Fort shows another single-entrance hill fort, one where the approach was protected by a moat and a dark tunnel instead of a stair of gates.

Lohagad teaches a lesson that textbook fort lists hide. A fort is a position, not a building, and its strength depends on the ground around it as much as on its own gates. Keep that in mind and the 1818 story, the Purandar surrender and even the UNESCO boundary all read as parts of the same argument.

Frequently Asked Questions

Practice Questions

Prelims

1. Consider the following statements about Lohagad Fort:
1. Shivaji ceded Lohagad to the Mughals under the Treaty of Purandar.
2. Lohagad was first fortified by the Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• (a) 1 only
• (b) 2 only
• (c) Both 1 and 2
• (d) Neither 1 nor 2

Answer: (a) Lohagad was ceded in 1665; it was a Bahmani fort by 1489, and it is Visapur that is credited to Balaji Vishwanath.

2. The Vinchu Kata, a long walled spur shaped like a scorpion’s tail, is a feature of which fort?

• (a) Pratapgad
• (b) Lohagad
• (c) Raigad
• (d) Shivneri

Answer: (b) The Vinchu Kata runs north-west from the hilltop of Lohagad near Lonavala.

3. Consider the following statements about the fall of Lohagad in 1818:
1. Lohagad was stormed after a long siege.
2. Visapur was occupied before Lohagad surrendered.
3. The British demolished Lohagad’s four gateways after taking it.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

• (a) 1 and 2 only
• (b) 2 only
• (c) 2 and 3 only
• (d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer: (b) Visapur fell on 4 March 1818 and Lohagad was taken the next day without resistance; its gateways were left standing.

4. A Marathi inscription of 1789 on a pond at Lohagad names its builder as Balaji Janardan Bhanu. This person is better known as:

• (a) Balaji Vishwanath
• (b) Nana Phadnavis
• (c) Mahadji Shinde
• (d) Sakharam Bapu

Answer: (b) Balaji Janardan Bhanu was the personal name of Nana Phadnavis.

5. Which of the following forts of the Maratha Military Landscapes of India are protected by the Archaeological Survey of India?
1. Lohagad
2. Pratapgad
3. Raigad
Select the correct answer using the code given below:

• (a) 1 and 2 only
• (b) 1 and 3 only
• (c) 2 and 3 only
• (d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer: (b) Pratapgad is protected by Maharashtra’s Directorate of Archaeology and Museums.

Mains

1. “A fort is a position, not a building.” Discuss with reference to the capture of Lohagad and Visapur in 1818. (10 marks, 150 words)
2. Trace the changes of control over Lohagad from 1489 to 1818 and explain what they reveal about power in the western Deccan. (15 marks, 250 words)
3. How did the design of Lohagad’s gateways seek to defend a single entrance? Evaluate the criticism that a series of gates can also weaken a fort. (10 marks, 150 words)
4. The Maratha Military Landscapes of India were inscribed as a serial property in 2025. Discuss the conservation challenges of managing popular trekking forts such as Lohagad as World Heritage components. (15 marks, 250 words)
5. The rock-cut architecture represents one of the most important sources of our knowledge of early Indian art and history. Discuss. (10 marks, 150 words) Previous year: Mains 2020, GS Paper I.