VAR AMRITSAR KI, also known as Var Singhan Ki, by Darshan Bhagat, a disciple of Bhai Kanhaiya is an eyewitness account of the battle fought in Amritsar between a force sent by the Mughal satrap of Lahore and the Sikhs on the Baisakhi day (29 March) of 1709. A manuscript

AURANGABAD, (19° 54`N, 75° 20`E) is a district town in Maharashtra. It is a railway station on the ManmadKachiguda section of the South Central Railway, 114 km from Manmad towards Nanded. The site was once the capital of the Yadavas ofDevgiri or Deogir in the 12th and 13th centuries; Aurangzib

HAR KRISHAN, GURU (1656-1664), the eighth Guru or prophet teacher of the Sikh faith, was the younger son of Guru Har Rai (1630-61) and Mata Sulakkham. He was born on 7 July 1656 at Kiratpur, in the Sivalik hills, in present day Ropar district of the Punjab. As his time

ZAFARNAMAH, Guru Gobind Singh\'s letter in Persian verse addressed to Emperor Aurangzib included in the Dasam Granth. The word zafarnamah is a compound of Arabic zafar, meaning victory, and Persian namah, meaning letter. Zafarnamah thus means a letter or epistle of victory. Pressed by a prolonged siege, Guru Gobind

AURANGZIB, MUHI UDDIN MUHAMMAD ALAMGIR (1618-1707), the last of the great Mughal emperors of India, ascended the throne of Delhi on 21 July 1658 after he had gained a decisive victory in the war of succession at Samugarh, near Agra, on 29 May 1658. Aurangzib`s appointment in 1636 as

JASSA SINGH NAUSHEHRA NANGLI (b. 1793), son of Kahn Singh was born to Shergil Sikh family of Naushehra Narigal, a village in Amritsar district. One Chaudhari Sarvani, a descendant of Sher, founder of the tribe, built the village of Naushehra, also called Raipur Sarvani, during the reign of Emperor

ZAFARNAMAH MU\'IN UL-MULK, an unpublished manuscript, is a book written in 1748-49 by Ghulam Muhaiy ud-Din Khan. It gives an account of Ahmad Shah Durrani\'s first two invasions of India. Copies of the manuscript are available at the University of the Pahjab, Lahore, Khalsa College, Amritsar, and in the

BAHADUR SHAH (1643-1712), Mughal emperor of India from 1707 to 1712. Born Muhammad Mu\'azzam at Burhanpur in the Deccan on 14 October 1643, he was actively employed by his father, Aurangzib, from 1663 onwards for subduing the kingdom of Bijapur and the Qutb Shahi dynasty of Golconda in the south.

JETHA SINGH was a Sikh of Guru Gobind Singh`s time. He was a merchant by profession and lived at Ahmadnagar. He was host, in Ahmadnagar, to Bhai Daya Singh, one of the Parij Piare, who travelled in 1706 to the South with Guru Gobind Singh`s letter, Zafamdmah, to be

BALLU, BHAI, a barber who embraced the Sikh faith at the hands of Guru Angad came into prominence in the time of Guru Amar Das. When Guru Amar Das, after being consecrated Guru by Guru Arigad, retired to Goindval and shut himself in a room to meditate in seclusion,

KHUSRAU, PRINCE (1587-1622), the eldest son of Prince Salim (later Emperor Jahanglr) from Man Bai (later Shah Bcgam), daughter of Raja Bhagvan Das of Amber, was born at Lahore on 6 August 1587. His grandfather, Emperor Akbar, had him brought up in the liberal tradition, entrusting his education to teachers,

BIR GURU, by Rabindranath Tagore, is a life sketch in Bengali of Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708), the last of the Ten Gurus of the Sikh faith, emphasizing especially how he had prepared Sikhs to stand up to oppression and injustice. This is Tagore`s first writing on Guru Gobind Singh published