livesoli.blogg.se

Like his first marriage, the second marriage brought him a strategic military alliance. Throughout her life she remained the favourite of Ranjit Singh, who called her Mai Nakain. She changed her name from Raj Kaur to avoid confusion with Ranjit Singh's mother. Raj Kaur (renamed Datar Kaur), the daughter of Sardar Ran Singh Nakai, the third ruler of Nakai Misl, was Ranjit Singh's second wife and the mother of his heir, Kharak Singh. The separation became complete when Ranjit Singh married his second wife Raj Kaur of Nakai Misl in 1798. However, the marriage failed, with Mehtab Kaur never forgiving the fact that her father had been killed by Ranjit Singh's father and she mainly lived with her mother after marriage. This marriage was pre-arranged in an attempt to reconcile warring Sikh misls, wherein Mahtab Kaur was betrothed to Ranjit Singh. Īt age 15, Ranjit Singh married his first wife Mehtab Kaur, the daughter of Sada Kaur, the ruler of Kanhaiya Misl. According to Khushwant Singh in an 1889 interview with the French journal Le Voltaire, his son Dalip (Duleep) Singh remarked, "I am the son of one of my father's forty-six wives". Some scholars note that the information on Ranjit Singh's marriages is unclear, and there is evidence that he had many mistresses. Ranjit Singh married many times, in various ceremonies, and had twenty wives. However, he neither smoked nor ate beef, and required all officials in his court, regardless of their religion, to adhere to these restrictions as part of their employment contract. In his teens, Ranjit Singh took to alcohol, a habit that intensified in the later decades of his life, according to the chronicles of his court historians and the Europeans who visited him. At age 18, his mother died and Lakhpat Rai was assassinated, and thereon he was helped by his mother-in-law from his first marriage. The first attempt on his life was made when he was age 13, by Hashmat Khan, but Ranjit Singh prevailed and killed the assailant instead. He then inherited his father's Sukkarchakkia misl estates and was raised by his mother Raj Kaur, who, along with Lakhpat Rai, also managed the estates. He was short in stature, never schooled, and did not learn to read or write anything beyond the Gurmukhi alphabet, however, he was trained at home in horse riding, musketry and other martial arts. Ranjit Singh contracted smallpox as an infant, which resulted in the loss of sight in his left eye and a pockmarked face. The child's name was changed to Ranjit (literally, "victor in battle") by his father to commemorate his army's victory over the Muslim Chatha chieftain Pir Muhammad. His birth name was Buddh Singh, after his ancestor who was a disciple of Guru Gobind Singh, a Khalsa, and whose descendants created the Sukerchakia misl before the birth of Ranjit Singh, which became the most powerful of many small Sikh kingdoms in northwestern Southern Asia in the wake of the disintegrating Mughal Empire. Ranjit Singh was born on 13 November 1780, to Mahan Singh Sukerchakia and Raj Kaur – the daughter of Raja Gajpat Singh of Jind, in Gujranwala, in the Majha region of Punjab (now in Pakistan). Maharaja Ranjit Singh was succeeded by his son, Maharaja Kharak Singh. He was popularly known as Sher-i-Punjab, or "Lion of Punjab".

His legacy includes a period of Sikh cultural and artistic renaissance, including the rebuilding of the Harimandir Sahib in Amritsar as well as other major gurudwaras, including Takht Sri Patna Sahib, Bihar and Hazur Sahib Nanded, Maharashtra under his sponsorship. His Khalsa army and government included Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Europeans. Ranjit Singh's reign introduced reforms, modernization, investment into infrastructure, and general prosperity. He repeatedly defeated invasions by Muslim armies, particularly those arriving from Afghanistan, and established friendly relations with the British.

Ranjit Singh successfully absorbed and united the Sikh misls and took over other local kingdoms to create the Sikh Empire. Prior to his rise, the Punjab region had numerous warring misls (confederacies), twelve of which were under Sikh rulers and one Muslim. His empire grew in the Punjab region under his leadership through 1839.

After his father died, he fought several wars to expel the Afghans in his teenage years, and was proclaimed as the "Maharaja of Punjab" at age 21. He fought his first battle alongside his father at age 10. He survived smallpox in infancy but lost sight in his left eye. Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780 –1839), was the founder of the Sikh Empire, which ruled the northwest Indian subcontinent in the early half of the 19th century. Lahore, Punjab, Sikh Empire (present-day Pakistan)Ĭremated remains stored in the Samadhi of Ranjit Singh in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan Gujranwala, Sukerchakia Misl (modern-day Pakistan)