THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

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somewhere near Kolhãpur, and after this the king and a few of his principal nobles marched down to Dābul and enjoyed the (to them) novel amusement of sailing about up and down the coast. Within three or four years of this, how

ever, thé Bijapur kingdom was established, and the whole Konkan passed to it. In 1508 the misfortunes of Dābul began, when it was bombarded by Almeida, the Por tuguese Viceroy, who did not, however, succeed in taking the fort. Ferishtah says that in 1510 Goa was ceded by the king of Bijápur to the Portuguese as the condition of their not

or Gulbargå, Dābul was the nearest port, and there was no need to look for another.

But

when independent kingdoms were established at Bijapur and Golkonda, it would be natural to look for ports further south than Dâbul; and Rājapur, and especially the splendid harbour and creek of Gheria, would soon obtain the pre ference. And in Maráthá days Dābul was en tirely eclipsed by the neighbouring town and fortress of

Anjanvel, and thus, between

near and

TXefore this, in 1515, a

distant rivals, fell into utter obscurity, as also did Chaul. Grant Duff says that in 1697 Dabul was granted in inăm to the Sirkë family, and a greater proof of its decay is that some of the present Hinduinhabitants are said to have grants, dated in the last century, of some of the best sites in the town, described as waste ground. As showing the obscurity it has now fallen into, I may mention that Thornton's Gazetteer of

Persian ambassador had embarked at Dâbul

India does not even contain the name of Dâbul,

on his way back from Bijapur, and this is

though, as not a single word is said about the ancient greatness or the ruins of Gulbargå, this is, perhaps, not surprising. On the other hand, in a map of India published with Orme's Historical Fragments in 1782, Dābul is marked conspicuously, while I find several lines given to it in a small Gazetteer of the Eastern Hemisphere published at Boston, U. S. in 1808. So much for history, and from that we pass into the region of tradition and conjecture. The Muhammadan inhabitants of the present day are so poor that there is not very much to be got from them, but they say that there were formerly 360 mosques in the town—a purely mythical number of course—and profess to be able to show the sites of nearly a hundred: and wherever foundations for new houses are dug, remains of Muhammadan buildings are pretty sure to be turned up. The following account of the large mosque on the shore, was given by Ghulām Çáheb Badar, one of the chief Muhammadan

molesting the other towns on the coast, and

that they kept this treaty. The Portuguese his torians, however, give a very different account; for according to themselves they were constant ly marauding, and in 1522 landed and levied a contribution at Dâbul.

the last event of the sort I have read of in

connection with the place. The Portuguese claim to have burnt every town on the coast

between Srivardhan and Goa in 1548, and again in 1569, but they are discreetly silent about an event which Ferishtah records of 1571.* A Portuguese force then landed at Dābul with

the intention of burning it as usual, though one would suppose that, as only two years had >

[OctoBER, 1873.

elapsed since the last occasion, there would not

be much worth burning. But the governor, Khwāja Ali Shirāzi, having heard of their in tentions, laid an ambush and put to death 150 of them. Not many years after this, when the

Portuguese had begun to be inconvenienced by the advances of the Dutch, they made peace with Bijapur, and we then hear no more of Dâbulf till it was plundered by Sivaji in 1660. Its subsequent history has nothing to do with the Musalmāns, and need not therefore be re

ferred to. Hamilton, a traveller of the beginning of the last century, mentions that the English

inhabitants, to Mr. G. Vidal, C.S. :—

had once a factory thene, but of this I have

“The mosk at Dābhol, in the Dápulităluqa of the Ratnāgiri Zilla, dates from the reign of Mahmūd

found no confirmation.

Adil Sháh of Bijápur, and was built in A. Hej.

It is not difficult to understand why it was that Dabul declined in the later days of the Musalmāns, and still more subsequently. So

1070 (A.D. 1659-60) by the king's daughter—the

princess 'Aéyshah Bíbí, or, as she was commonly called, the Mā Qāheba. “The princess had conceived a wish to visit the -

long as the Musalmān capital was at Bidar

holy shrine at Mekkah before she came of age,

.,

translatiºn), vol. I. p. 379; vol.II, pp. 295,350, 413, 483-4, 3, #3:35, Vol. III. pp. 7, 48, 345, 507,513; vol. IV. pp.71,

Sheikh Zin-ud-din in the Toh fat ul mujahidºn, places

it in 1577. See Toh fat, p. 174—Ep.

f Ferishtah mentions it in the following places (Briggs's

533, 530, 540,-ED,