Free Empire of the Sikhs by Patwant Singh Page B

Attock on the River Indus 200 miles to the town of Rohtas, which belonged to Ranjit Singh.
    To confuse Zaman and draw his force from its base in Hasan Abdal, Ranjit Singh withdrew his men from Rohtas to Pind Dadan Khan in the salt ranges. When the Afghans attacked Ranjit Singh he crossed the River Jhelum, reassembled on its southern bank and sent his messengers to the regional Maratha chief, Daulat Rao Sindhia, at Aligarh, inviting him to join the Sikhs and expel the Afghan invader. There was, however, no response from the Maratha chief.
    As fate would have it, Zaman had to return home in a hurry on hearing news of a revolt at Herat, but he was back again by October 1796, for the third time, camping in Peshawar for a month. Ranjit Singh’s rapid manoeuvres once again had the Afghans baffled. He established himself with a force of 10,000 menacross the Jhelum not far from Peshawar, then moved to Pind Dadan Khan, then on to Miani, then suddenly crossed the Jhelum for a surprise attack on the Durranis at Pind Dadan Khan before recrossing the river once again. At this point Zaman Shah addressed a letter to Ranjit Singh asking him to desist from opposing him. Ranjit Singh’s reply is celebrated. ‘Through the grace of the Guru every Sikh is bound to be victorious.’ 8
    Still on his third invasion, Zaman Shah entered Lahore in January 1797 with a formidable force. Lahore had been officially made an Afghan province in 1752 after the Abdalis had wrested it from the Mughals. Zaman did not want to waste time in Lahore because he was keen to reach Amritsar to settle the Sikh problem once and for all. Ranjit Singh could barely wait to take him on. When a detachment of the Afghan army first took the offensive and attacked Amritsar on 11 January 1797 it suffered a humiliating defeat with much loss of blood. A furious Zaman Shah, beside himself with rage, now took personal command and arrived in Amritsar the next day. He, too, was not only vanquished but was chased all the way to the gates of Lahore by the Sikh army.
    To make certain that the Durrani hordes would never again set foot in India, Ranjit Singh invited Sahib Singh to join him in expelling him. Sahib Singh was chief of the Phulkian
misl,
whose great-grandfather, Ala Singh, had been made Raja of Patiala by Ahmed Shah Abdali during a previous invasion of India in 1763, the same Abdali who a year before that had blown the Harmandir Sahib apart, filled the sacred pool with human bodies and carcasses of cows, killed thousands of pilgrims and made a pyramid of Sikh heads on the site. Not surprisingly, Ranjit Singh received no reply from Sahib Singh. Most of what the Patiala family owned had come to it through Abdali’s largesse.
    Zaman Shah, still smarting from his defeat at the gates of Amritsar, left Lahore in February 1797 for Peshawar
en route
for Afghanistan. His general Ahmad Khan Shahanchibashi, left behindat Rohtas to take care of the Sikhs, was finished off there on 29 April 1797. With India still very much on his mind, Zaman launched his last invasion in September 1798, eager to drive the Sikhs out of Punjab and put a decisive end to Ranjit Singh’s power. The various battles and skirmishes that took place during this visit took him no further towards ending Sikh power, and when he received news from Afghanistan of a serious threat to his throne in Kabul he hastened back to his capital. Taking advantage of his absence, the Iranians had invaded Khorasan in Afghanistan and were making their way to Kabul. In his precipitate departure, Zaman lost twelve of his prized cannon in the Jhelum river which was in spate. The loss of these guns in fact proved a turning point in his relations with Ranjit Singh who, on receiving an urgent plea for his help in retrieving the guns, magnanimously complied. Zaman Shah then assured Ranjit Singh that he would not oppose his taking over Lahore.
    On returning home, Zaman Shah was soon in the thick of rampant court intrigues