Siege of Multan (1818)

01The Zamzama and the breach

Multan was the old city of the Sun temple, held since Abdali’s time by Afghan nawabs. Ranjit Singh had taken tribute from it before but never the fort. In 1818 he sent a great army under Misr Diwan Chand, with his son Kharak Singh in nominal command, and heavy guns, among them the Zamzama, the great gun of Abdali’s day that the Bhangi Sikhs had taken. The siege ran for three months under summer heat. When the walls were breached, Akali warriors led the storm on 2 June. The old nawab came out with his sons and kinsmen and fought at the gate until they were all cut down.

02A province gained

Ranjit Singh gave pensions to the nawab’s surviving sons. Multan, with its trade routes to Sindh and Afghanistan, became one of the richest provinces of the Sikh state, and from 1821 it was governed by Sawan Mal, a Hindu administrator whose canals and revenue settlements were long remembered. His son Mulraj’s quarrel with the British in 1848 began the Second Anglo-Sikh War at the same fort.

Person · 1780–1839 CE; Maharaja 1801–1839Maharaja Ranjit SinghA misl chief’s son who lost an eye to smallpox as a child, Ranjit Singh took Lahore in 1799 and made one kingdom out of the Punjab, Multan, Kashmir and Peshawar. He covered the Harmandir Sahib in gilded copper and held the Khyber against the Afghans for forty years.Read →