1. ZAFARNAMAH

ZAFARNAMAH, Guru Gobind Singh's letter in Persian verse addressed to Emperor Aurangzib included in the Dasam Granth. The word zafarnamah is a compound of Arabic zafar, meaning victory, and Persian namah, meaning letter. Zafarnamah thus means a letter or epistle of victory. Pressed by a prolonged siege, Guru Gobind Singh had to evacuate Anandpur, in the Sivaliks, in December 1705. He passed through a very strenuous period and travelling across the sandy plains of the Punjab reached Dina, a small village in Faridkot area with only three companions or followers.

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2. ZAFARNAMAH MU lN UL-MULK

ZAFARNAMAH MU'IN UL-MULK, an unpublished manuscript, is a book written in 1748-49 by Ghulam Muhaiy ud-Din Khan. It gives an account of Ahmad Shah Durrani's first two invasions of India. Copies of the manuscript are available at the University of the Pahjab, Lahore, Khalsa College, Amritsar, and in the Punjab Historical Studies Department of Punjabi University, Patiala. The author appears to be a courtier or a great admirer of Mu'in ul-Mulk, the Mughal governor of the Punjab from 1748 to 1753, whose dauntless courage and administrative capability he profusely praises. He seems to be a well read person with a scholarly style of writing rich in quotations from Arabic texts.

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3. ZAFARNAMAH SAHIB GURUDWARA

ZAFARNAMAH SAHIB - It is a Gurdwara, at village Dialpura Bhai Ka, built in the memory of the visit by Guru Gobind Singh Sahib. According to a local tradition, it is here that Guru Sahib wrote Zafarnamah (literally: letter of victory); hence the name of the Gurdwara.

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4. ZAFARNAMAH-I-RANJIT SINGH

ZAFARNAMAH-I-RANJIT SINGH (A Chronicle of the Victories of Ranjit Singh), by Diwan Amar Nath, is a contemporary account in Persian of the events of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's reign from AD 1800 to AD 1837. Amar Nath, born in 1822, was the son of Diwan Dina Nath, the Maharaja's finance minister, and grandson of Bakht Mall, a noted scholar of Persian and Arabic and author of the Khalsa Namah. Amar Nath held the position of Bakhshi or paymaster of the irregular cavalry forces of the Sikh government of Lahore and was personally acquainted with most of the influential men at the Sikh court.

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5. ZAFARNAMAH-I-RANJlT SINGH

ZAFARNAMAH-I-RANJlT SINGH, subtitled Ranjhnamah, by Kanhaiya Lal is an account in Persian verse of the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his successors, covering the period 1799-1849. The manuscript copies of the work are preserved in Panjab University Library, Lahore ; Panjab Public Library, Lahore ; Khalsa College, Amritsar ; and the Punjab State Archives, Patiala. Its author, Kanhaiya Lal, was a native of Jalesar, an old town in Agra district of Uttar Pradesh. His father Lala Hari Narain Mathur had migrated to Lahore. Here Kanhaiya Lal acquired technical education and rose to be an executive engineer. The British government conferred upon him the title of Rai Bahadur.

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6. ZAIL SINGH, GIANI

ZAIL SINGH, GIANI (1916-1994), the first Punjabi to become President of the Republic of India, was born on 5 May 1916, the son of Bhai Kishan Singh and Mata Ind Kaur, a Ramgarhia couple of a small village, Sandhvan, near Kot Kapura, in the princely state of Faridkot. Kishan Singh was the village carpenter. Additionally, he had his own small acreage to till. He was a devout Sikh and was known in the countryside for his simple and upright manner. Youngest of the five brothers and a sister, Zail Singh lost his mother in his early childhood. He was brought up by his mother's sister, Daya Kaur.

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7. ZAIN KHAN

ZAIN KHAN (d. 1764), an Afghan, was appointed governor of Sirhind in March 1761 by Ahmad Shah Durrani. Earlier he had acted as Faujdar of Char Mahal the four districts of Sialkot, Gujrat, Pasrur and Aurarigabad. This was from 1759 when Karim Dad Khan was appointed governor of the Punjab by the Afghan invader. For his relentless campaign against the Sikhs and for his part in die Vadda Ghallughara ( 5 February 1762), or Great Carnage, at the village of Kup Rahira near Malerkotia, Zain Khan had become a special target of their vengeance. Within four months of the Ghallughara they attacked Sirhind with a strong force, inflicting upon him a severe defeat and laying him under tribute.

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8. ZAKARIYA KHAN

ZAKARIYA KHAN (d. 1745), who replaced his father 'Abd us-Samad Khan as governor of Lahore in 1726, had earlier acted as governor of Jammu (1713-20) and of Kashmir (1720-26). He liad also taken part in Lahore government's operations against the Sikh leader Banda Singh Bahadur. After tlie capture of Banda Singh and his companions in December 1715 at Gurdas Nangal, lie escorted the prisoners to Delhi, rounding up Sikhs lie could find in villages along the route. As he reached the Mughal capital, the caravan comprised seven hundred bullock carts full of severed heads and over seven hundred captives. After becoming the governor of the province in 1726, Khan Bahadur Zakariya Khan, shortened to Khanu by Sikhs, launched a still severer policy against tlie Sikhs and let loose terror upon them.

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9. ZINDAGI NAMAH

ZINDAGI NAMAH, a book of pious poetry in Persian by Bhai Nand Lal Goya, an honoured Sikh of Guru Gobind Singh, whose name continues to be remembered with affection and esteem. A distinction which uniquely belongs to him is that his verse can be sung along with Scriptural hymns at Sikh religious divans, an exception made only in one other case, viz. that of Bhai Gurdas. The Zindagi Namah is believed to be Nand Lal's first work of poetry which he wrote after he had shifted to Anandpur to join the Guru. 

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10. ZOBEIR RAHAMA

ZOBEIR RAHAMA (1830-1913), Egyptain pasha and Sudanese governor whose name is mentioned in connection with the campaign for the restoration of Maharaja Duleep Singh to the throne of the Punjab, was a member of a family which claimed descent from the Quraish tribe through Abbas, uncle of Muhammad. He was a leading ivory and slave trader on the White Nile. Nominally a subject of Egypt, he raised an army of several thousand well armed blacks and became a dangerous rival to the Egyptian authorities. He participated on the side of the Turks in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. Because of the influence he commanded in international affairs, Maharaja Duleep Singh on his return to Europe from Aden in 1886 sought to enlist his support.

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