The one-eyed warlord who fused a dozen rival Sikh war-bands into a single kingdom and gave the Sikhs, for the first and only time, an empire of their own. Ranjit Singh (1780–1839), the Lion of Punjab, captured Lahore in 1799 and was proclaimed Maharaja in 1801, built a state across the Punjab, Kashmir, and Peshawar, and is remembered for ruling Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims with unusual even-handedness. The empire collapsed within a decade of his death and was annexed by the British.
He could not read, and a childhood bout of smallpox had cost him an eye and pitted his face. Yet by the age of twenty Ranjit Singh had taken Lahore, and at twenty he was on his way to becoming Maharaja of the Punjab. He inherited a land of squabbling Sikh war-bands and Afghan raiders and welded it into one of the most formidable states in early-nineteenth-century Asia. He gilded the holiest shrine of his own faith, helping give the Golden Temple its famous gleam, and the fabled Koh-i-Noor diamond passed into his hands. But the Sikhs were a minority in his realm, and he ruled Muslims and Hindus alongside them, employing all three at the highest levels of his court and army. He was the only man ever to give the Sikhs an empire. It did not survive him by ten years.