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Abstract
Although there were many influential Maratha families like Mores, Ghatagas, Nimbalkars who were exerising control in small regions but none of them created a big and well establish empire like Rajputs. The credit for creating such an empire is given to shahji Bhonsale and his son Shivaji. In Deccan kingdom, many officials were creating semi-independent principality of their own like Mir Jumlo (noble in Golconda) tried on coromandal coast, Shahji at Bangalore, the Abyssinians on western coast and Siddis behaved in the same manner. It was in this kind of background that Shivaji attempted to create a large principality near Poona.