Kapurthala

Kapurthala became a centre of the Ahluwalia Sikh chiefs in the eighteenth-century struggle for Punjab. Jassa Singh Ahluwalia helped lead resistance to Mughal provincial power and Ahmad Shah Durrani's invasions. In 1772 the Ahluwalia chiefs took Kapurthala from its Muslim rulers, and Jassa Singh made it his capital before his death in 1783. The town's political rise belonged to the formation of the Sikh misls, whose territories emerged through warfare and alliances.

In the early nineteenth century, Fateh Singh Ahluwalia maintained a close relationship with Ranjit Singh, even as the latter consolidated the kingdom centred on Lahore. The two exchanged turbans in 1802 as a pledge of brotherhood and joined in an agreement with the East India Company in 1806. Kapurthala retained its dynastic identity within this shifting political order. Its chiefs' standing depended both on their own territories in the Doab and on their relations with stronger neighbours and the expanding British power beyond the Sutlej.