long mountain spur running eastwards from Puna. From this place the Mughal general could at will move westwards along the north of the range to protect the valleys of the Mula and the Bhima (the North Puna district), or along the south of it to guard the valleys of the Nira and the Baramati (the southern portion of the district.) Northwards he could communicate with his great depot of arms and provisions at Ahmadnagar, without having to cross any river (except at the foot of that fort); and southwards he could easily invade Bijapur through the Sholapur district. In short, the cantonment at Pedgaon served as the Mughal advanced base for some years after this time, exactly as Aurangzib's camp at Brahmapuri, 90 miles s. e. e. of it, did twenty-two years later, when the Mughal empire had extended further south.
It was most probably in this year (1673)*[1] that Shivaji met with a sore disappointment. The fort of Shivner, a mile west of Junnar, was no doubt of strategic importance, as it guarded the Mughal frontier in the north of the Puna district and blocked the shortest route by which he could sally out of North Konkan to overrun Mughal Deccan. But what gave it the greatest value in Shivaji's eyes was
that it was his birth-place. The Mughal governor of Shivner was Abdul Aziz Khan, a Brahman convert
- ↑ * But Z. C. asserts that he besieged Junnar (i.e., Shivner) in Sept. 1670.
