QUTB UDDIN (d. 1832), younger brother of Nizam udDin, the Afghan chief of Kasur, succeeded to the gaddi of Kasur on the latter`s death in 1802. He began fortifying Kasur in an endeavour to overthrow the authority of Ranjit Singh whose tributary he was. Ranjit Singh led an expedition

SULABI KHAN. a nephew of Sulahi Khan, bore Guru Arjan a personal grudge thinking that his uncle had died as a result of Guru Arjan`s curse. Abetted by Chandu Shah, who had his own axe to grind, to take revenge on the Guru, Sulabi Khan set out with a

ABD USSAMAD KHAN (d. 1737), governor of Lahore from 1713 to 1726, a descendant of the Naqashbandi saint `Abdulla Ahrar, a great grandson of Khwaja Baki of Baghdad, was born at Agra when his father, Khwaja `Abd ul-Karim Ansari, had come out with his family from Samarkand on a tour

AZIZ UDDIN, FAQIR (1780-1845), physician, diplomat, and foreign minister at the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was the eldest son of Ghulam Mohy udDin, a leading physician of Lahore. Of his two brothers, Nur udDin held charge of the city of Lahore and had been governor of Gujrat, and Imam

DOST MUHAMMAD KHAN. AMIR (1791-1863), ruler of Kabul and Qandahar, was the son of Painda Khan (executed 1799), the Barakzai chief. Dost Muhammad`s first engagement with the Sikhs was at Attock, the Afghan citadel, which had fallen into the hands of the Sikhs in June 1813. In the conflict which

IMAM UDDIN, FAQIR (d. 1847), second son of Ghulam Mohly udDTn and younger brother of Faqir `Azi/ udDin, foreign minister to Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was Qiladar or garrison commander of the Gobindgarh Fort at Amritsar, where the bulk of the Sikh crown jewels was kept in deposit. Capable and scholarly.

MAZHAR ALI, an artillery officer in Sikh times who commanded the horse battery of Maharaja Ranjit Singh`s Topkhanai Khas. For a time, he served under General Ghaus Khan with command of a battery of 10 light guns. He took part in the Attock operations in 1813 under the command

QUTB UDDIN (d. 1832), younger brother of Nizam udDin, the Afghan chief of Kasur, succeeded to the gaddi of Kasur on the latter`s death in 1802. He began fortifying Kasur in an endeavour to overthrow the authority of Ranjit Singh whose tributary he was. Ranjit Singh led an expedition

SULAHI KHAN, a Mughal courtier, was befriended by Baba Prithi Chand with a view to securing official patronage for his claim to succession to the spiritual title to which his father, Guru Ram Das, had nominated his youngest son, Arjan. Prithi Chand, eldest of three brothers, had founded a new

ABUL FAZL (1551-1602), principal secretary-cum-minister to Akbar, the Mughal emperor. He was an accomplished man of learning and was the author of two celebrated works, A`ini Akbari and Akbar-nama, the former being a description of Akbar`s administrative system and the latter a chronicle of the events of his reign.

BABAK (d. 1642), a Muslim rababi or musician, kept Guru Hargobind company and recited the sacred hymns at divans morning and evening. The word babak, from Persian, means faithful. As says the Gurbilas Chhevin Patshahi, Babak was, at the death of Satta and Balvand, who used to recite sacred

FARID, SHAIKH (569-664 AH/AD 1173-1265), Sufi mystic and teacher, who is also known to be the first recorded poet in the Punjabi language. His father Shaikh Jamaluddin Sulaiman whose family related, according to current tradition, to the rulers of Kabul by ties of blood, left his home in Central Asia