Poonch

Poonch was a small valley principality west of the Kashmir plain, between the Pir Panjal range and the Jhelum. Its raja Trilochanpal resisted Mahmud of Ghazni at the fort of Lohara in 1020.

From 1475 the Kashmiri general Malik Tazi Bhat campaigned through the hills and made Poonch a tributary of the Kashmir Sultanate. The Mughal conquest of Kashmir in 1586 transferred its overlordship to Delhi. In 1819 Maharaja Ranjit Singh seized Poonch and granted it as a jagir to his Dogra minister Dhyan Singh.