ALA SINGH, BABA (1691-1765), Sikh mis leader who became the first ruling chief of Patiala, was born in 1691 at Phul, in present day Bathinda district of the Punjab, the third son of Bhai Ram Singh. His grandfather, Baba Phul, had been as a small boy blessed by Guru

BHIKHAN SHAH OR SHAH BHIKH, PIR, a seventeenth century Sufi saint, was born the son of Sayyid Muhammad Yusaf of Siana Sayyidari, a village 5 km from Pehova, now in Kurukshetra district of Haryana. For a time, he lived at Ghuram in present day Patiala district of the Punjab and

DULA SINGH (d. 1857), son of Khushal Singh, was a cavalry officer in the Sikh army. He was most of the time employed on the Afghan frontier, and received severe wounds in the expedition against Dost Muhammad Khan. This forced him to retire, on aJa^ir. from active service while

HIRA SINGH (c. 1706-1767), founder of the Nakai mislor chief ship, was a Sandhu Jatt of the village of Bahirval, near Chuniari, in Lahore district, now in Pakistan. He was born the son of Chaudhari Hem Raj, headman of the village. In 1731, he received the initiatory rites of

KARAM SINGH (d. 1784), a leading figure in the Shahid clan of Sandhu Jatts of the village of Marahka in Sheikhupura district, now in Pakistan. According to Sir Lcpel Griffin, he was a grandson of Baba Dip Singh, the martyr. In January 1764, at the conquest of the Sirhind

KUKAS or NAMDHARIS, the name given to the members of a sectarian group that arose among the Sikhs towards the close of the nineteenth century. Kuk, in Punjabi, means a scream or shout. While chanting the sacred hymns at their religious congregations, the adherents of the new order broke into

NAMDEV (1270-1350), saint of Maharashtra who composed poetry of fervent devotion in Marathi as well as in Hindi. His Hindi verse and his extended visit to the Punjab carried his fame far beyond the borders of Maharashtra. Sixty-one of his hymns in fact came to be included in Sikh Scripture,

RAM SINGH CHHAPEVALA (d. 1840) was a man of note who fought in the battles of Ramnagar, Cheliarivala and Gujrat during the second AngloSikh war of 1848-49. His father. Dial Singh, was born in a poor peasant family of the village of Dadumajra, in Sialkot district of the Punjab.

SUNDAR SINGH, BHAI (1881-1921), one of the Nankana Sahib martyrs, belonged to Nizampur Deva Singhvala, near Dharovali in Sheikhupura district. His original name was Sudh Singh. He was the son of Bhai Chanda Singh Kamboj and Mat Hukami and was born in July August 1881, at their ancestral village Nizampur

AMAR SINGH MAN (d. 1805), landowner in Amritsar district who left his village about the year 1759, adopted the Sikh faith and joined the Kanhaiya Misl. He overran and took possession of a large part of Gurdaspur district, including Sukalgarh and Dharamkot. He built a fort at Sukalgarh which

BHUMA SINGH (d. 1746), a Dhillon Jatt of the village of Hung near Badhni, in present day Faridkot district of the Punjab, gathered power in men and money during Nadir Shah`s invasion of India in 1739. At the time of the death of Nawab Zakariya Khan, the Mughal governor

DASAUNDHA SINGH (d. 1767), founder of the Nishanavali misl, was the son of Chaudhari Sahib Rai belonging to the village of Mansur, in Firozpur district of the Punjab. He received pahul, the Khalsa initiatory rites at the hands of Diwan Darbara Singh, a prominent Sikh leader of the post