Battle of Haidru (1828)

01The plan against Attock

After the defeat at Shaidu, Syed Ahmad and his followers kept up the war from the Yusufzai hills. Attock fort, guarding the main crossing of the Indus, was the key to the Sikh frontier, and in 1828 he planned to take it. He counted on the help of Khadi Khan, the chief of Hund on the river. Khadi Khan instead sent word of the plan to Hari Singh Nalwa, who commanded on the frontier, and Nalwa moved his troops to meet the attempt near Haidru, below Attock.

02Failure and revenge

With surprise lost, the attack on Attock failed, and Syed Ahmad drew back across the Indus. The fighting was on a small scale, and the details survive only in brief accounts. In 1829 Syed Ahmad took his revenge on Khadi Khan, defeating and killing him at Hund. The Sikh hold on the Indus crossing was not shaken again until the Afghan advance of 1837.

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 →