The Battle for Khari, 1840

In the summer of 1841, three Dogra brothers maneuvered through a collapsing Sikh Empire, playing every side to stay on top. Their intrigues in Lahore set off a chain of events that would carry one of them into Khari Khariyali -- today's Mirpur -- and lead from the siege of Lahore to the siege of Mangla.

At its height under Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Empire stretched from the Khyber Pass to the borders of Tibet, with Lahore as its capital and one of the most formidable armies in Asia. But after Ranjit Singh's death in 1839, the empire's stability began to unravel. His son Kharak Singh inherited the throne, only to be assassinated by Dhian Singh Dogra -- the empire's powerful vizier. Dhian then placed Kharak's son Nau Nihal Singh on the throne, but the young heir soon died in a suspicious "accident," leaving Lahore without a clear successor.

Ranjit Singh and the three Dogra brothers.

Dhian Singh invited another of Ranjit Singh's sons, Sher Singh, to Lahore. At the same time, a rival faction led by the Sandhawalia Jatts -- and backed by Dhian's own brothers, Gulab Singh and Suchet Singh -- rallied behind Nau Nihal's mother, Chand Kaur, supporting her claim as regent for her unborn grandchild.

Dhian managed to broker a temporary power-sharing deal under which Chand Kaur was formally proclaimed regent on December 2, but it was only meant to buy time. He withdrew to his territory in Jammu while Sher Singh returned to his estates in Batala. The plotting never stopped; before long, Sher Singh marched back to Lahore, and most of the Khalsa army sided with him against Chand Kaur.

Chand Kaur, along with 3,000 of her soldiers, led by Gulab Singh and Suchet Singh Dogra -- the youngest of the Dogra brothers -- soon found themselves besieged inside the Lahore Fort. After several skirmishes, the hopelessly outnumbered Dogra garrison surrendered. Dhian Singh once again brokered a settlement: Chand Kaur would abdicate in favor of Sher Singh, her supporters would be granted clemency, and she was given estates in Khari Khariyali for her retirement.

Panorama of Lahore City, circa 1840 (Bonhams).

After the brief civil war, Chand Kaur remained in Lahore, living in the Haveli Nau Nihal Singh, where she would later, in 1842, be brutally murdered. Right after the conflict, her retirement estates in Khari Khariyali were placed under the management of Gulab Singh, who had assisted her during the fighting. Gulab soon returned to Jammu and sent his general, Diwan Hari Chand, to assert control over the Khari Khariyali jagirs, which were still held by Sikh troops under Surat Singh -- a situation made tense by the fresh scars of the recent civil war.

Khari Khariyali, which roughly corresponds to the area of today's Mirpur Tehsil, was historically laid out quite differently from the modern town. It described a band of land about 10 kilometres wide between the ridge where present-day Mirpur now sits and the Jhelum River. The ridge was then forested and mostly uninhabited; settlements lay on its southern slopes or along the Jhelum's floodplain. The historical town of Mirpur itself lay beyond the ridge to the north, within the basin of the Punch and Jhelum rivers, on the banks of a smaller seasonal stream, and was not part of Khari Khariyali.

At the northern tip of Khari Khariyali stood Mangla Fort, the region's historical capital. It had been the seat of the Chib dynasty, which had resisted for years before finally being subdued by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Further south along the Jhelum, the plain is broad, but near Mangla the valley narrows and the land becomes hillier -- terrain that made the fort's hilltop position especially formidable.

Mangla Fort (hill in centre), before construction of the Mangla Dam.

The Dogra army first struck at a small Mughal-era fortified town called Aurangabad -- known today as Sarai Alamgir -- on the east bank of the Jhelum. From there, they marched north along the river into Khari Khariyali proper.

A chain of forts guarded the eastern bank of the Jhelum, with Sukhchainpur to the south and Mangla to the north. Sukhchainpur's fort stood where the Jari Nala meets the river, its walls protected by water on two sides and its position naturally strong.

Forts of Southern Azad Kashmir.

Even so, the Dogra forces stormed Sukhchainpur, then pushed further along the Jhelum, seizing a place called Kot Kandhari. From there, they advanced toward Mangla Fort and laid siege.

Mangla Fort, at the northern tip of Khari, sat on a prominent hill surrounded on three sides by a meander of the Jhelum and could be approached from only one direction. Previous attempts to capture it -- even by Ranjit Singh himself -- had failed. This time, however, Diwan Hari Chand managed to destroy the fort's water source, forcing the defenders from the Sikh army to surrender after a 15-day siege. This marked the first time the Dogras gained direct control over the region -- control that would last for 107 years -- until the second siege of Mangla Fort during the Kashmir War.

Reading this account in the Gulab Nama, the biography of the first Dogra ruler Maharaja Gulab Singh, I tried my best to match the old place names with their modern counterparts -- and some of them, like Sukhchainpur, are still there. Last winter, my father and I visited the small town twice, now linked by a bridge across the Jari Nala, and spoke with locals about its history and whether anything from that era might remain.

Approximate map of Khari Khariyali.

There had also been a Dogra-era thana there, which might correspond to the fort we are looking for, but being so close to two rivers, the site has flooded repeatedly, as recently as 1992, making it hard to say if the original structure survived.

I couldn't match Qila Kandhari to any location I know in the area, but that only shows how much of our history has been lost. On the way to Sukhchainpur, I passed many villages built on raised mounds across the Jhelum floodplain, each of them likely sitting on hundreds of years of history.

The Dogra campaign and the siege of Mangla may seem like distant history, but their traces still linger in the land and stories of Khari Khariyali.

Sources

Gulabnama Of Diwan Kirpa Ram Persian History Of The Maharaja Gulab Singh (published 1876). Archive.org