Banda Singh Bahadur Captures Sirhind and Proclaims the First Sikh State

In May 1710, two years after Guru Gobind Singh declared the Guru Granth Sahib the eternal Guru in 1708, already recorded here, and eighty nine years before the Sikh Empire rose in Punjab in 1799, also recorded here, the Sikh commander Banda Singh Bahadur led the Khalsa army to victory over the Mughal governor Wazir Khan at the Battle of Chappar Chiri outside Sirhind. Wazir Khan, who had ordered Guru Gobind Singh's two youngest sons bricked alive in the city five years earlier, was killed in the battle. Banda Singh Bahadur's forces then besieged Sirhind itself, breaching its gates between 12 and 14 May 1710 after fierce fighting and heavy Sikh casualties. He appointed Baj Singh governor of the captured city, struck coin in the name of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh, abolished the existing zamindari landholding system and distributed land to the peasant farmers who worked it. The victory, avenging the Sahibzadas' martyrdom and toppling a major Mughal stronghold, gave the Khalsa its first territory under direct Sikh administration, a base Banda Singh Bahadur later governed from the hill fortress of Lohgarh as the first Sikh state, before Mughal forces recaptured and executed him in 1716.