Vishalgad

Vishalgad, also called Khelna, is a hill fort in Kolhapur district. It was built by Bhoja II, the last ruler of the Shilahara dynasty, between 1178 and 1209. In 1216 the Yadava king Simhana II captured it after defeating the Shilahara forces, a conquest that ended the Shilahara line and brought its lands into the Yadava state.

After the Yadavas declined, the Surves took over the fort; they were a Suryavanshi family who had moved from Saurashtra to the Konkan and founded a kingdom there. In 1471 the Bahmani general Mahmud Gawan laid siege to Vishalgad and forced the Surves to give it up. Its commanding position made it a focus of repeated fighting in the Deccan, involving in turn the Bahmani Sultanate, the Vijayanagara Empire, the Surves, the Bijapur Sultanate, the Mughals and the Marathas.