CHAMKAUR SAHIB (30° 53\'N, 76° 25\'E) in Ropar district of the Punjab was the scene of two engagements which took place here between Guru Gobind Singh and the imperial troops in the opening years of the eighteenth century. There exist six shrines in the town commemorating the events of those fateful days. GURDWARA DAMDAMA SAHIB marks the Spot where Guru Gobind Singh first alighted upon reaching Chamkaur late on 6 December 1705. The site was then a garden belonging to Rai Jagat Singh, the local landlord.
CHUHARVAL, village 11 km west of Chamkaur Sahib (30° 53`N, 76° 25`E), has a gurdwara called Jhar Sahib, dedicated to Guru Gobind Singh, who quitting Chamkaur on the night of 7 December 1705, reached this spot. In a cluster of thorny bushes (Jhar) here, he relaxed for awhile before resuming his journey further west. A shrine was later established to mark the site. A land grant of 75 bighas, made to it by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, has been continued by successive governments.
HIMMAT SINGH, BHAI (1661-1705), one of the Parij Piare, or the Five Beloved, celebrated in Sikh history, was born in 1661 at Jagannath in a low caste family of water suppliers. He came to Anandpur at the young age of 17, and attached himself to the service of Guru Gobind Singh. Bhat Himmat, as he was called before his initiation, was one of the five Sikhs who one by one offered to lay down their heads in response to the Guru`s successive calls made at an assembly of the Sikhs especially summoned on the occasion of Baisakhi of 1756 Bk corresponding to 30 March 1699.
Nandram, one of the poets who kept Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708) company, was the son of a well-known Sufi poet, Vali Ram. He had been in the service of Dara Shukoh, who, having lost the struggle for succession to his father\'s throne, was executed by his brother, Emperor Aurangzib, in 1659. When he came under the patronage of Guru Gobind Singh is not known. Two of his poems, Nand Pachisi and Karkha Guru Gobind Singh Ka, both in Gurmukhl script, have survived. The former describing Kaliyuga, the on temporary Age of Darkness, was written in 1687 and the latter an ode on the life of Guru Gobind Singh, sometime after the battle of Chamkaur (1705).
AJAB SINGH (d. 1705). son of Bhai Mani Ram, a Rajput Sikh of `Alipur in Multan district, now in Pakistan, came to Anandpur with his father and four brothers, and received the rites of initiation at the inauguration of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh on the Baisakhi day of 1699. He remained in Guru Gobind Singh`s retinue until his death in the battle of Chamkaur on 7 December 1705.
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