Gingee, also known as Senji or Jinji and originally called Singapuri, is a panchayat town in Viluppuram district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Gingee is located between three hills covering a perimeter of 3 km, and lies west of the Sankaraparani River.

The imperial Vijayanagara dominion gradually expanded over Southern India and divided the administration of the tamil country into three important provinces, which were assigned to the Nayaks.

The last Nayak of Gingee was forced to surrender to the invading Bijapur Sultanate army towards the end of December 1649.

Bijapur was in possession of the fortress of Senji until 1677, when the Maratha monarch Chhtrapati Shivaji Maharaj conquered it in his Carnatic expedition.

The Mughals were then able to capture Gingee Fort from the Maratha emperor Rajaram I early in 1698, after a siege of seven years.

After that, Aurangzeb granted a mansab of 2,500 rank and jagir of 12 lakhs to Raja Swarup Singh, his Bundela Rajput servant, along with the killedari (Fort Commandership) of Gingee in 1700.

Hearing about the death of his father, Desingh, the son of Raja Swarup Singh, started for Gingee from Bundelkhand, his ancestral home.

The Nawab of Arcot, Saadatullah Khan I, who attempted to dispossess Desingh, pleaded that the firman was not valid.

In fact after capturing the fort from Marathas, Aurangzeb had first appointed Nawab Daud Khan as the deputy subahdar of the Deccan.

Nawab Daud Khan removed his headquarters from Gingee to the town of Arcot, as he believed that the place was not healthy.

However, the fortress of Gingee lost its pre-eminent position and political importance within a few years of the extinction of the Rajput rule.Subsequently, the English and the French competed for the control of Gingee and the French won it for themselves on 11 September 1750, under the initiative of Marquis de Bussy, the Governor-General of Pondicherry.

Gingee remained firmly in French possession until after the fall of Pondicherry to Sir Eyre Coote in January 1761.

Gingee regained its political importance for the last time in 1780, when Hyder Ali of Mysore, helped by some able French officers, invaded the Carnatic with a force of 90,000 men.

The presence of Turko-Persian Muslim rulers in Gingee is evident from the inhabitants of a nearby village called Minambur, where the Urdu speaking Navaitha Muslims living with their unique culture and tribes such as Shakir, Koken, Bhanday Bhonday, Choudary, Pappa, Aghalay, Hazari, Amberkhani, Sayeed etc.