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| SIKH,S IN DIPALPUR |
DIPALPUR CITY
Depalpur Tehsil
Capital DIPALPUR
Towns 4
Union councils 55
Dipalpur is a town in the Okara District of the Punjab, Pakistan. It is situated 25 kilometers from the district capital Okara on a bank of the Beas River in Bari Doab. The town is notable for being the site of several battles in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and is also associated with the history of the Bhatti clan.
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| A OLD HOUSE IN DIPALPUR FORT |
Coins from the Saka (Scythian) period found in the area suggest that it was inhabited as early as 100 BC. After Multan, this is probably the oldest continuously occupied site on the subcontinent.
General Alexander Cunningham writes that the area was mentioned in the works of Ptolemy under several different names. According to local legend, Dipalpur got its name from Raja Dipa Chand when he captured the city . Dipalpur was the first fortification on the route from the Khyber Pass to Delhi.
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| TAMPLE OF DIPALPUR IN BRITSH RULE |
Mongols
Dipalpur gained fame as an outpost that played a significant part in defending the Delhi Sultanate against the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.In 1285, Muhammad Khan(khan shaheed), son of Emperor Balban, was killed in a bloody battle against the Mongols and the famous poet Amir Khusro was taken prisoner. The tomb where Muhammad Tughlaq is interred may still be seen in an isolated part of the city, although it has become rather dilapidated.
Ghazi Malik
Under Ala-ud-din the town became the headquarters of Ghazi Malik (also known as Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq). Firuz Shah Tughluq made a royal visit to the town in the fourteenth century. Mughal Emperor Akbar made it the headquarters of one of the sarkars (revenue districts) of Multan Province.Mughal King Akbar
The Mughal king Akbar, along with his son Saleem and royal entourage, stayed in Dipalpur when he came to pay homage to Saint Hazrat Farid Ghang Shakar in 1578. Akbar named the corridor Bari Doab by combining the syllables of the names of the two rivers, Beas and Ravi, that bounded the area. Baba Guru Nanak also stayed in Dipalpur for some time. The ruins of a Gurudwara mark the place. |
| MUGHAL EMPEROR AKBAR'S VISIT OF DIPALPUR |
Partition
The town dwindled in importance during the British Raj. It had a significant number of Hindus before the partition of India, which dispersed most of them. It is now a market town and the capital of the local tehsil.
Historical Architecture
In the past, Dipalpur was surrounded by a fortified wall, rising to the height of 25 feet and strengthened by a deep trench. When and by whom this wall was constructed is not known, but it was renovated, repaired and improved during the rule of Firoz Shah Tughluq and later by Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khanan, who was the governor during the time of Akbar. Firoz Shah Tughluq constructed a grand mosque and palaces. He also excavated a canal from the river Sutlej to irrigate gardens around the town.
Wide and airy tunnels linked the royal residential quarters inside the fort to the adjoining gardens outside. There were 24 burgs (musketry holes) on the fortification wall, 24 mosques, 24 bavlis (ponds) and 24 wells at the town's peak. The trench, ponds and tunnels have been filled in , but in some places the location of the trench can still be defined. Most of the wall has been razed. Two of the four massive gateways with pointed arches also exist though they are badly damaged and their wooden doors have vanished. Later coats of cement have marred the original architecture of the gateways.
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| DEHLI GATE (BASIRPUR GATE / QUAID-E-AZAM GATE) |
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| MULTANI GATE (PAKPATAN GATE / BAAB-E-ROSHAN) |
Hindu Monastery
Besides doors with decorated latches, Jharokhas, bay windows and cut brick works, the most noticeable feature inside old Dipalpur is the monastery of Lal Jas Raj, a guru much venerated by the local people.
According to the famous legend, Lal Jas Raj was the young son of Raja Dipa Chand, the founder of Dipalpur. He sank into the earth due to a curse by his stepmother Rani Dholran. Raja Dipa Chand constructed this monastery in the memory of his son. Today, the chamber is dilapidated, the doors are jammed and a stairway is used for storage. The structure itself is crumbling. According to local residents, there used to be a grand annual "Mela" held here. It was also used by Hindus as a place to perform the Sardukahr (head-shaving ritual) until the partition, but "nobody comes anymore".
Inn
Another notable structure in the old section of Dipalpur is a saray (inn) near the monastery of Lal Jas Raj. It was a spacious building with airy rooms on four sides, a big courtyard in the centre and four arched entrances. The inn, like most of the older structures in town, is now in a state of disrepair. It has been divided and subdivided so many times by successive occupants that the original shapes are obscured. Even the verandas have been converted to create rooms.
Saints
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| LAL JAS RAJ INN (SRA'AYE) |
MONTGOMERY DISTRICT GAZZETTEER 1883-84
THE CANAL,THE KHANWAH
When the river was in flood, water came down this channel as far as Hujra and then ran through the Gandobar nalla into the old Bias. When Mirza Khan the Khan-i-Khanan, was governor of Lahore, he improved this water course, chiefly by constructing an inlet or head on the satluj, connecting the nalla with the river,20 miles above its former point of communication; and by erecting dams and embankments along the course of the canal. He is said, too, to have extended the canal so that water went down it, as far as nalla in Pak Pattan, probably through the local nalla called Ghuri. The canal below Hujra was after these extensions were made, called the Khanwah. After the Khan-i-Khanan nothing seems to have been done for a long time to improve the canal. It of course silted up, and it was only in heavy floods that any water came down. The flourishing “town of Dipalpur became depopulated, and the whole taluka of Hujra would have become as desolate as the region now traversed by the old Bias, had it not been for an occasional supply obtained at high floods by the old channel which previously formed the inlet of the nalla .” If the Moghals did nothing, the Afghans of Dipalpur, and the Sayads of Hujra, who succeeded them, were not more energetic. It was not till after Ranjit Singh had occupied the country that any effort was made to restore the canal. In A.D 1807 Diwan Radha Ram, the kardar, repaired the head and cleared out the channel. The canal after that flowed steadily during the rainy season till 1823. The next year silted up. Jawand Singh Mokal, then held taluka Dipalpur in jagir, but did nothing. But in 1841 Fakir Chiragh-ud-din, under orders of Maharaja Sher Singh, had the canal cleared out and a new head dug at Mamuki, still known as Sher Singh’s inlet, but long since abandoned. Shortly after annexation the canal was made over the canal Department, and has since been greatly improved.
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