Shivaji and the Maratha kings: a short history of the Maratha Empire

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj founded the Maratha kingdom in India in the 17th century. His coronation in 1674 began what Encyclopaedia Britannica calls the Maratha Empire, and Maratha rule lasted until 1818. This guide covers his life, the hill and sea forts that UNESCO added to the World Heritage List in 2025, the kings and chief ministers who came after him, and the portraits of Maratha leaders that museums hold today.

Who was Shivaji?

Shivaji was the son of Shahaji Bhosale, a Maratha general who served the Deccan sultanates, the kingdoms that ruled the Deccan region of central India. Britannica gives two possible birth dates, April 1627 or 19 February 1630, and places his birth at Shivneri, near Pune. ICOMOS, the expert body that reviews sites for UNESCO, also describes Shivneri Fort as his birthplace.

According to Britannica, Shivaji took his first fort in 1645. Over the next years he fought the Bijapur sultanate and the Mughal Empire. In 1659 Bijapur sent an army against him under its general Afzal Khan. Britannica records that Shivaji killed Afzal Khan at a meeting between the two men, and that his troops then defeated the Bijapur army. ICOMOS links this battle to Pratapgad, a hill fort built on Shivaji's order in 1656.

The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb then sent a large army against him. Shivaji made peace and agreed to attend the Mughal court at Agra, where he and his son were kept under house arrest. On 17 August 1666, Britannica says, the two escaped by having themselves carried past the guards in large baskets of sweets. Shivaji went on to build a navy, and he used it for both trade and defence.

When and where was Shivaji crowned?

Shivaji was crowned on 6 June 1674 at Raigad Fort, in what is now the state of Maharashtra. The Government of India's Press Information Bureau and its tourism site, Incredible India, both give this date and place. At the ceremony he took the title Chhatrapati. Britannica translates the word as "Keeper of the Umbrella" and treats the coronation as the formal beginning of the Maratha Empire. The anniversary, called Shivrajyabhishek Din, is still marked at Raigad every 6 June.

Raigad was his second capital. The ICOMOS evaluation explains that his first capital was Rajgad, a different hill fort that had been part of his father's lands. Shivaji rebuilt Raigad in 1662 with a royal palace, a market and a system for collecting rainwater, and it became the centre of his government and of royal ceremony.

After the coronation, Shivaji ruled for six years with a council of eight ministers. Incredible India gives the council's name as the Ashtapradhan Mandal. He died at Raigad on 3 April 1680, according to Britannica. The Press Information Bureau reports that his samadhi, a memorial to him, stands on the fort today.

The Maratha forts on the UNESCO World Heritage List

In 2025 UNESCO added the Maratha Military Landscapes of India to its World Heritage List. The site has 12 forts that the Marathas built, adapted or expanded between the late 17th and early 19th centuries. Eleven are in Maharashtra and one is in Tamil Nadu. The ICOMOS evaluation sorts them by setting:

• Hill forts in the Sahyadri range, also called the Western Ghats: Salher, Shivneri, Lohagad, Raigad, Rajgad, Pratapgad and Panhala.
• Sea forts on the Konkan coast: Khanderi, Suvarnadurg, Sindhudurg and Vijaydurg.
• A hill fort in the Eastern Ghats: Gingee, in Tamil Nadu.

The ICOMOS evaluation also gives the history of each fort. Sindhudurg, which Shivaji built on Kurte Island in 1664, became the headquarters of the Maratha navy. Gingee began as a stronghold of the Chola dynasty. Shivaji's forces captured it in 1677, and the Mughals took it in 1698. Raigad held out through several Mughal sieges and passed to the British in 1818.

The Maratha kings after Shivaji

Shivaji's son Sambhaji took the throne in 1680. Britannica records that he ruled until 1689, when Aurangzeb captured and executed him. Aurangzeb also captured Sambhaji's son Shahu, so Sambhaji's half-brother Rajaram became king.

After Aurangzeb died in 1707, the new Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah I, released Shahu. Shahu claimed the throne against Shivaji II, the son of Rajaram, who ruled with the support of his mother, Tarabai. The dispute became a civil war. Britannica dates Shahu's reign from 1708 to 1749.

The Peshwas and the end of the Maratha Empire

A peshwa was the chief minister of the Maratha state. Britannica explains that the peshwa first led Shivaji's advisory council. Shahu appointed Balaji Vishvanath as peshwa, which began the peshwa era. In Britannica's words, "all effective power was concentrated in the peshwa", and Pune became the peshwas' capital. Balaji's son Baji Rao I served as peshwa from 1720 to 1740 and made the post pass from father to son. Under him the Marathas took Malwa and Gujarat.

Between 1720 and 1761 the Maratha Empire grew fast. At its peak, Britannica writes, it controlled most of the subcontinent, from Rajasthan and Punjab in the north to Bengal and Orissa in the east and Tanjore in the south. In 1761 the Maratha army lost the Third Battle of Panipat to Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founder of the Durrani empire of Afghanistan.

The peshwa Madhavrao I rebuilt Maratha power after Panipat and gave the Maratha chiefs more freedom to govern their own lands. This led to the Maratha confederacy, a group of allied Maratha states. Its leading families included the Gaekwars of Baroda, the Sindhias of Gwalior and the Holkars of Indore.

The Marathas then fought three wars with the English East India Company. They won the first, from 1775 to 1782, and lost land in the second, from 1803 to 1805. The third war ended in 1818 with a Maratha defeat. The last peshwa, Baji Rao II, was sent into exile, and Maratha lands came under direct British rule. Baroda and Indore continued as princely states, the states that kept their own rulers under British power. Our guide to what Maharaja means explains how those states worked.

Why Shivaji built forts instead of one capital city

Shivaji's kingdom depended on a network of hill and sea forts rather than a single fortified capital, and the ICOMOS evaluation cited above treats this as the defining feature of the whole Maratha Military Landscapes site. Each fort in the network, hill or sea, could hold its own garrison and its own stores, which meant no single battle or siege could end Maratha resistance. An enemy that wanted to defeat the Marathas had to take the forts one at a time, at a cost in time and soldiers that a single decisive battle would not have required.

This is also why the same UNESCO listing groups land forts and sea forts together rather than treating them separately. Sindhudurg, described above as the headquarters of the Maratha navy, defended the Konkan coast in the same way Raigad and Rajgad defended the hills: as one part of a wider system built to make the Maratha kingdom hard to conquer by any single stroke.

Maratha King compared with the other Indian court styles

Maratha King sits alongside eight other Indian court portrait styles on Purrealism, and each one draws on a different regional history. The Rajput Warrior style draws on the Rajput clans of northern and western India, covered in our guide to Rajput painting. The Chola Warrior style draws on the older Chola dynasty of southern India, which the Chola dynasty guide covers, and whose reach touched Gingee, one of the same 12 forts later held by the Marathas. The Maratha King style is the one most directly tied to a single named historical figure, Shivaji, rather than to a dynasty spanning many rulers.

If your pet has a strong, alert character rather than a calm, seated one, the guide to choosing a royal portrait style groups Maratha King with the other warrior styles, since a pet that guards the door or reacts to every sound tends to suit a warrior pose better than a seated ruler.

How Maratha rulers were painted

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam holds a Portrait of Shivaji painted by an unknown artist in Golconda, one of the Deccan sultanates. The museum dates it between 1675 and 1685. It is painted in gouache, a thick watercolour that covers the paper fully, with gold leaf, on a sheet 203 millimetres high and 140 millimetres wide. Shivaji is shown from the hips up, facing left, with a sword in his right hand. In his armoured left hand he holds what the museum lists, with a question mark, as a lance. The page is number 46 of the Witsen Album, a set of 49 Indian miniature portraits of rulers. Small labels pasted above and below the picture give his name in Persian and in Portuguese.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds a later Deccan painting from the late 18th century, made in opaque watercolour and gold on paper. It shows the Maratha commander Sadashivrao Bhau riding a horse, with eight soldiers walking beside him at the foot of a grassy hill. For the court painting traditions of the same centuries, see our guides to Mughal painting and Rajput painting.

Maratha King is one of the 15 royal portrait styles on Purrealism, beside Indian court styles such as Maharaja and Mughal Emperor. The eight finished portraits in the gallery show other styles. To see the Maratha King style with your own pet, choose it in the portrait studio and add a clear photo of your dog or cat.