Guru Nanak settles at Kartarpur and founds the sangat and langar

Who: Guru Nanak, then in his early fifties, with his wife and children. A wealthy follower, not named in the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, gave the land. Disciples who gathered here included Bhai Buddha, who spent more time at Kartarpur than at his own village, and Bhai Lahina, the future Guru Angad, who came to receive instruction.

What: The Encyclopaedia says Guru Nanak's years of travelling, which Sikh tradition groups into four long journeys (udasis), ended around 1521 with the founding of Kartarpur. A year or so earlier, in 1520, he and Mardana had been caught in the sack of Saidpur and held by Babur's men before being released. Dates in this period are approximate, because the main early accounts are the Janam Sakhis. At Kartarpur Nanak did not retire to a hermitage. He farmed, and the produce fed his family and the common kitchen. Each day began before sunrise with the singing of hymns, went on with work, and ended with hymns and prayers in the evening. The dharamsal he set up, the place where Sikhs met, gave the langar the central place. Sikhs sat together in a row (pangat) to eat, whatever their caste or status, bringing offerings and giving their labour to cook and serve. Men and women joined the sangat, the holy congregation, without distinction of caste or creed. His hymns were written down here, and as copies reached other centres each had a leader to instruct newcomers.

Where: Kartarpur, on the right bank of the River Ravi, in what is now Pakistan's Punjab. The Ravi's floods later washed away most of the old village, and the Guru's descendants and followers moved across the river and built Dera Baba Nanak. The Encyclopaedia records that the gurdwara at Kartarpur had been inaccessible to Sikhs in India since the Partition of 1947; the Kartarpur Corridor has its own entry in this timeline.

Why it mattered: Kartarpur turned a travelling teacher's message into a settled way of life. The Encyclopaedia says Guru Nanak had not set up a vast organisation but a simple spiritual and moral discipline that could reproduce itself. It sums that discipline up as earning a living by honest labour, sharing the fruit of it, and keeping the Divine Name in mind (kirat karni, vand chhakna, nam japna). Langar and sangat remain the two institutions that carry it into every gurdwara. Kartarpur was also where Nanak died, after naming Lahina his successor in place of his own sons; the Encyclopaedia gives the date of his death as 7 September 1539.