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1659] west coast, while they naturally fostered the growth of rich ports and trade centres, made it imperatively necessary for their protection that their owner should rule the sea. On the other hand, the possession of Danda-Rajpuri and its adjacent district was necessary to the owner of Janjira for his very existence. The political separation of the two made war an economic necessity to him.

In 1648 Shivaji had captured the forts of Tala, Ghonsala, and Rairi (or Raigarh), situated in the Siddi's territory, but the latter still held Danda-Rajpuri and much of the neighbouring land. There must have been constant skirmishes between the two Powers thus occupying the eastern and western portions of the Kolaba district, but no record of them has come down to us. The Siddi had too small an army to defy the regular Maratha forces on land, and seems to have confined himself to making secret raids and doing petty acts of mischief to Shivaji's villages in that region, as is clear from the Maratha chronicler's description of the Siddi as "an enemy like the mice in a house." (Sabh. 67.) Very little activity was probably shown by Yusuf Khan who ruled Janjira from 1642 to 1655.

But his successor Fath Khan was a brave active and able leader. In 1659, when Afzal Khan was advancing against Shivaji from the east with a