Sanjan
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
Sanjan
Village in the Dahanu taluka of Thana District, Bombay, situated in 20 12' N. and 72 51' E., with a station on the Bombay, Baroda, and Central India Railway. Sanjan was in former times a trading town of considerable importance, and according to tradition was founded by one Raja Gaddhe Singh. It covered so large an area that it earned the name of Navteri Nagari, or the city which measured 9 kos by 13. Although some authorities suppose that the Sanjan in which the Pars! refugees from Persia settled about 720 was a town of that name in Cutch, there are better grounds for believing that it was Sanjan in Thana District, which is mentioned under the name of Hamjaman in three Silahara land grants of the tenth and eleventh centuries.
By the Arab geographers of the same period the town is repeatedly spoken of, under the name of Sindan, as one of the chief ports of Western India. In 915 it was described as a great city with a Jama Masjid, and as famous for the export of a fine emerald, known as the Mecca emerald owing to its having been brought from Arabia. Al Idrlsi speaks of it in the twelfth century as peopled with industrious and very intelligent inhabitants, large, rich, and warlike, and enjoying a great export and import trade : and it doubtless maintained its wealth and importance till the beginning of the fourteenth century, when it was attacked and after a fierce resistance stormed by Alaf Khan, general of Ala-ud-dm Khilji. Its Pars! citizens were killed, enslaved, or driven to the hills, and most of those who escaped settled at Nargol, about four miles away, which is still one of the largest Pars! villages on the coast. From that date little is heard of Sanjan until 1534, when it was captured by the Portuguese.
Pyrard de Laval and Sir T. Herbert both mention it during the early years of the seven- teenth century as subject to Portugal; and the latter writer terms the place St. John (i.e. Sanjan) de Vacas, which is identical with the St. John or St. John's Peak known to English navigators of that period. Sanjan had by this time lost much of its former importance, and yielded through its customs-house a revenue of only 23 (620 pardaos). It was guarded by a fort built in 1613 by the Portuguese and described by a writer of that nation in 1634 as a round fort with six bastions, enclosing a very handsome well and two ponds, some houses, an arsenal, and a church. The population of the fort then consisted of a commandant and twenty soldiers, a clerk, an inspector, a priest, and forty-two families of Portuguese and native Christians. The garrison was accustomed to add to its pay by cultivation. Dr. Hove, the Polish savant, visited the town in 1787.
Sanjan at the present day contains the remains of several large ponds and lakes, which are filled with silt and are utilized for culti- vation. Bricks of an antique type lie scattered over the surrounding fields and form the walls of most of the ruined buildings. Apart from these, the antiquities of Sanjan consist of some carved slabs, the remains of a Pars! 'tower of silence' (1300-1500), the ruins of the Portuguese fort mentioned above, and two inscribed slabs, one bearing Hindu characters and dated 1432, and the other Kufic characters of eight centuries ago. The latter was probably erected originally over the grave of one of the Arab merchants whose descendants, the Navaits, still form a separate class in the coast towns of Thana Dis- trict. Sanjan also contains two European graves of unknown date.
