Battle of Multan (1766)

01The Bhangis march on Multan

The Bhangi misl, strongest of the Sikh confederacies in the 1760s, already held Lahore jointly and much of the Majha. Soon after Jhanda Singh became its head in 1766, he and his brother Ganda Singh led a large force south-west towards Multan, which still answered to Kabul. They halted on the right bank of the Sutlej opposite Bahawalpur. Mubarak Khan, the Daudputra ruler of Bahawalpur, came out to meet them, and Shuja Khan of Multan joined him.

02A drawn fight and a boundary

The fight on the riverbank was long and bloody and neither army broke. Both sides then chose terms over a second battle. The treaty fixed Pakpattan, the town of Baba Farid’s shrine, as the line between the Bhangi lands and Bahawalpur, and Jhanda Singh was accepted as master up to it. The Bhangis turned north-west against other chiefs, and came back for Multan itself in 1772, when they took it.