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Battle of Amritsar (1797)

VictorSikh mislsRanjit Singh of the Sukerchakia misl, with other sardars
1797vs
Durrani army of KabulShah Zaman

On his third descent into the Punjab, Shah Zaman of Kabul took Lahore without a fight and then sent his army against Amritsar. The misls stood their ground before the city and the Afghans went back to Lahore.

Date: January 1797Where: Near Amritsar, PunjabType: Battle
Photo: Unknown author · Public domain
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Cite

MLA

“Battle of Amritsar (1797).” Hindu History, 2026, https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/battle-of-amritsar-1797/. Accessed .

APA

Hindu History. (2026). Battle of Amritsar (1797). Retrieved , from https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/battle-of-amritsar-1797/

Result

The Sikhs beat off the Afghan attack near Amritsar and Shah Zaman fell back on Lahore.

01Shah Zaman comes down

Shah Zaman, grandson of Ahmad Shah Abdali, crossed the Indus late in 1796 dreaming of his grandfather’s empire and of a march on Delhi. The Sikh chiefs sent their families into the hills and let him enter Lahore at the start of January 1797. Young Ranjit Singh, then about sixteen, kept his horsemen close, raiding the Afghan foragers instead of offering battle on open ground.

02The fight before the city

An Afghan cavalry column rode on Amritsar and was driven back. Shah Zaman then sent a larger force with camel-borne swivel guns. The fighting before Amritsar lasted most of a day; Sikh accounts say the misls broke the deadlock with a close charge, sword in hand, and chased the Afghans towards Lahore. The Shah did not try again. News of his brother Mahmud’s revolt at Herat soon called him home, and he left a governor at Rohtas to hold the north-west.

The Sikh Empire (Sarkar-i-Khalsa)
Dynasty · 1799–1849 CEThe Sikh Empire (Sarkar-i-Khalsa)Ranjit Singh took Lahore in 1799 and was proclaimed Maharaja of the Punjab in 1801. He united the Sikh misls into one state, pushed the Afghans back beyond the Khyber, and built the last great Indian army to face the British; ten years after his death the empire was annexed in 1849.Read →
Why it matters

The repulse showed the misls could face a Durrani army, and it raised the name of Ranjit Singh, who took Lahore two years later.

People 1

Maharaja Ranjit SinghRuler
1780–1839 CE; Maharaja 1801–1839

Maharaja Ranjit Singh

Founder of the Sikh empire

Places near the battlefield 8

Jallianwala Bagh, AmritsarStanding
Renaissance and the struggle for Swaraj

Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar

The walled ground near the Harmandir Sahib where, on Baisakhi, 13 April 1919, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer’s troops fired on an unarmed crowd for about ten minutes without warning. The official count was 379 dead; Indian inquiries put it near a thousand.

Sri Harmandir Sahib, AmritsarRebuilt
The Mughal era and the resistance

Sri Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar

The holiest gurdwara of the Sikhs, set in the Amrit Sarovar dug by Guru Ram Das, where Guru Arjan Dev installed the Adi Granth in 1604. Afghan armies desecrated and blew it up in the 18th century; the Khalsa rebuilt it each time.

Partition Museum, AmritsarStanding
Independent Bharat

Partition Museum, Amritsar

A museum in Amritsar’s old Town Hall, a short walk from the Golden Temple, given wholly to the Partition of 1947: the trains, the camps, the lost homes, told mostly in the voices of those who lived through it.

Durgiana Temple, AmritsarRebuilt
Renaissance and the struggle for Swaraj

Durgiana Temple, Amritsar

The chief Hindu temple of Amritsar, standing in the middle of a sarovar and reached by a causeway, built in the same form as the Harmandir Sahib. Beside it the Bada Hanuman temple holds the famous Langur Mela of Navratri.

AmritsarRebuilt
The Mughal era and the resistance

Amritsar

The city of the pool of nectar, founded by the fourth Sikh Guru around the tank in which the Harmandir Sahib stands. Twice blown up by Ahmad Shah Abdali and twice rebuilt, it is the heart of the Sikh faith, the Dharmic sibling of the Hindus.

Mata Lal Devi Temple, AmritsarStanding
Independent Bharat

Mata Lal Devi Temple, Amritsar

A temple built around the memory of a woman devotee of Amritsar, Lal Devi, whose followers made it a small Vaishno Devi in the plains: low passages, ankle-deep water, and the Devi’s three pindis at the end.

Ram Tirath (Bhagwan Valmiki Tirath), AmritsarStanding
Vedic Rishis and the Itihasa

Ram Tirath (Bhagwan Valmiki Tirath), Amritsar

The place west of Amritsar where the people of Punjab hold that Maharshi Valmiki had his ashram, where Mata Sita lived after leaving Ayodhya and where Lava and Kusha were born. Its Kartik Purnima fair is one of the oldest in Punjab.

Tarn Taran SahibStanding
The Mughal era and the resistance

Tarn Taran Sahib

The town and sarovar founded by Guru Arjan Dev in 1590, south of Amritsar. Its tank is the largest of any gurdwara, and its name means ‘the boat that carries across’.