The Marathas are the single most important power to have emerged in the long twilight of the Mughal dynasty.

Initially deriving from the western Deccan as a peasant warrior group, the Marathas had risen to prominence during the rule in that region of the sultans of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar.

The most important Maratha warrior clan, the Bhonsles, had held extensive jagirs (land-tax entitlements) under the 'Adil Shahi rulers; these were consolidated in the course of the 1630s and '40s as Bijapur expanded to the south and southwest.

Sahji Bhonsle, the first prominent member of the clan, had drawn substantial revenues from the Karnataka region, in territories that had once been controlled by the rulers of Mysore and other chiefs who derived from the collapsing Vijayanagar kingdom.

One of his children, Sivaji Bhonsle, had emerged as the most powerful figure in the clan to the west, while Sivaji's half-brother Vyamkoji had been able to gain control over the Kaveri delta and the kingdom of Thanjavur in the 1670s.

The death, in 1680, of Shivaji Bhonsle, had brought to the throne his son Sambhagi, whose experience as a Mughal hostage had made him briefly defect to the Muslim side during the Marathan-Mughal War of 1670-80.

It had also brought a new element into the conflict: the defection of Crown Prince Akbar, son of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, to the Hindu side during the ongoing Rajput rebellion against his father.