Mughal-Maratha wars:A comprehensive Look

There is no doubt that the single most important power to emerge in the long twilight of the Mughal dynasty was the Maratha confederacy. Initially deriving from the western Deccan, the Marathas were a peasant warrior group that rose to prominence during the rule in that region of the sultans of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar. The most important Maratha warrior clan, the Bhonsles, had held extensive jāgīrs (land-tax entitlements) under the ʿĀdil Shāhī rulers, and these were consolidated in the course of the 1630s and ’40s, as Bijapur expanded to the south and southwest. Shahji Bhonsle, the first prominent member of the clan, drew substantial revenues from the Karnataka region, in territories that had once been controlled by the rulers of Mysore and other chiefs who derived from the collapsing Vijayanagar kingdom. One of his children, Shivaji Bhonsle, emerged as the most powerful figure in the clan to the west, while Vyamkoji, half-brother of Shivaji, was able to gain control over the Kaveri (Cauvery) River delta and the kingdom of Thanjavur in the 1670s.

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Sources used: 1)https://books.google.co.in/books?id=j...
2)https://books.google.co.in/books?id=l...
3)https://books.google.co.in/books?id=d...