Paranda Fort

Paranda Fort stands in the small town of Paranda in Dharashiv (Osmanabad) district. Its builder is uncertain, credited either to Mahmud Gawan, the Bahmani minister, or to Murtaza Nizam Shah II early in the 17th century, and it first appears in records under Mahmud Shah Bahmani. It later passed to the Ahmadnagar Sultanate and, lying where Nizam Shahi, Adil Shahi and Qutb Shahi lands met, saw constant skirmishes. It was sold to the Adil Shahis, withstood two Mughal sieges in the 1630s, and finally went to Aurangzeb without a fight, becoming a Mughal mint town.

The fort is roughly a parallelogram, enclosed by a glacis, an outer wall and double ramparts with 26 rounded bastions, all within a moat once crossed by a wooden drawbridge. Big cannons still sit on some bastions, many cast by Dutch craftsmen and one carrying the name of an Arab engineer in Bijapur's service, more guns and about 300 cannonballs remain at the fort. Inside stands a Jami Masjid with three entrances.