The Sikhs take Lahore and strike coins in the Gurus' name

Who: Lahna Singh and Gujjar Singh of the Bhangi misl and Sobha Singh, an associate of Jai Singh Kanhaiya; against them the Afghan garrison of Lahore.

What: In 1765 the three sardars captured Lahore from the Afghans, and the Encyclopaedia's entry on Jassa Singh Ahluwalia gives 17 April. As Lahna Singh was senior, being Gujjar Singh's maternal uncle, he took the city and fort. Gujjar Singh took the eastern part, then a jungle, and built a mud fortress, which the area still remembers as Qila Gujjar Singh.

The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism's entry on Sikh coins records that a silver coin, the Gobindshahi sikka, was struck at the Lahore mint and issued until 1777. One side carried the couplet deg tegh fatah-o-nusrat bedrang, yaft az Nanak Guru Gobind Singh, the same one Banda Singh Bahadur had put on his seal. The reverse carried the mint line, which the Encyclopaedia renders "struck at the capital Lahore in the year 1822 [AD 1765] of intimate prosperity". From 1777 Amritsar issued the Nanakshahi coins, with Akal Sahai Guru Nanak Ji in Gurmukhi on one face.

A 1761 coin issued after a briefer Sikh occupation of Lahore, naming Jassa Singh as "Jassa Kalal", was quickly withdrawn because it bore a Sikh's name rather than a Guru's. Some think it was not a Sikh issue at all.

Where: Lahore, the provincial capital, where Sikhs had been tortured and killed at the Nakhas for decades and where Guru Arjan was martyred in 1606.

Why it mattered: The word sikka means both a coin die and rule, implying sovereignty. Striking coin in the Gurus' names, not a ruler's, claimed power on the Panth's own terms. Ahmad Shah retook the city in December 1766 and the Bhangi chiefs returned in 1767, ruling for about thirty years until Ranjit Singh occupied Lahore in 1799. Sources differ on dates: the Encyclopaedia's Lahore entry puts the Bhangi occupation on 16 May 1764, its other entries on 1765.