Guru Arjan, fifth in the Sikh line, had done more than any predecessor to give the community institutional form. He completed the pool and the central shrine at Amritsar, and in 1604 he compiled the Adi Granth, the scripture, gathering the compositions of his predecessors with those of Hindu and Muslim devotional poets whose teaching he judged consonant with the Gurus'. The community he led was large, organised and collecting its own offerings.
In 1606 he was taken into Mughal custody at Lahore and died there under torture. The emperor Jahangir's own memoir records his decision in the matter, complaining that too many people, Hindus and Muslims alike, were being drawn to the Guru, and stating that he ordered him brought in. Sikh tradition holds that he was tortured with heat and refused to yield, and that his composure under it is the pattern of martyrdom in the faith.
Historians read the mixture of motives differently. Political factors are present in the record, including the Guru's reported contact with a rebellious prince. Religious hostility is also present in the emperor's own words about conversions. What is not in dispute is the effect within Sikhism: a community that had been quietist acquired a martyr, and the question of how to respond became the central question of the next century.