This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
The Sikh Panth's relationship with Mughal authority began peacefully enough: the first Guru, Nanak, preached in the same period the Mughal Empire was founded, and early Mughal emperors showed little interest in the small religious community developing in Punjab. That changed as the Panth grew in numbers, wealth and organization, and began to look, to a suspicious provincial administration, less like a devotional movement and more like a rival center of authority. In 1606 the Mughal emperor Jahangir had the fifth Guru, Arjan, tortured and executed, ostensibly for supporting a rebel prince.
Arjan's son and successor, Guru Hargobind, responded by arming the Panth and fortifying its headquarters at Amritsar, and fought the first outright battles against Mughal forces from 1621 onward. Sporadic conflict continued through the following decades and worsened sharply under the emperor Aurangzeb, whose reign saw the execution of the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, in Delhi in 1675. The tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, responded in 1699 by founding the Khalsa, a baptized brotherhood of Sikh soldier-saints bound by a shared code and appearance, and fought a series of battles against both Mughal forces and neighboring hill states until his own death in 1708.
The following year, the ascetic turned general Banda Singh Bahadur took up armed rebellion in Guru Gobind Singh's name, seizing Mughal territory across Punjab and executing the provincial governor responsible for Guru Tegh Bahadur's death. Mughal forces eventually surrounded and captured Banda Singh Bahadur's stronghold in December 1715; he and hundreds of his followers were tortured and executed in Delhi the following June.