HOLA MAHALLA or simply Hola, a Sikh festival, takes place on the first of the lunar month of Chef which usually falls in March. This follows the Hindu festival of Holi. The name Hola is the masculine form of the feminine sounding Holi. Mahalla, derived from the

SAMMAN BURJ, also called Musamman Burj, an octagonal tower commanding a wide range of buildings within the Lahore Fort, was built by Emperor Akbar, who made the city his capital for some time. Within the Fort was situated the royal palace which was enlarged by Jahangir and,

TARA SINGH, SARDAR (1888-1956), lawyer, legislator and judge, was born in 1888, the son of Pratap Singh Gill of Moga, a district town of the Punjab. Having matriculated from a local high school in 1903, he graduated from Khalsa College, Amritsar, in 1907 and obtained his law degree from

AZIZ UDDIN, FAQIR (1780-1845), physician, diplomat, and foreign minister at the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, was the eldest son of Ghulam Mohy udDin, a leading physician of Lahore. Of his two brothers, Nur udDin held charge of the city of Lahore and had been governor of Gujrat, and Imam

SARHALA (popularly known as Sarhala Rannuan), village 12 km west of Bahga (31`1 I`M, 76"E) in Jalandhar district of the Punjab, has within its revenue limits a historical shrine, Gurdwara Gurplah Panj Tahli, dedicated to Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621-75), who stayed here once during a journey through the Doaba

RORI SAHIB GURUDWARA, EMINABAD Eminabad, an old town 15 kilometres south of Gujrariwala, is linked to Grand Trunk Road and Eminabad railway station by four-kilometres stretch of metalled road. It has three historical shrines Gurudwara Rori Sahib, half-a-kilometre northwest of the town, marks the place where once Guru Nanak Dev,

POHLO MALL, a goldsmith by caste and resident of Raja Sarisi in present day Amritsar district, was a mukhtdrkdr, i.e. attorney, in the service of Thakur Singh Sandharivalia and later, when the Sardar`s estate was placed under a court of wards, a clerk of the court. He kept in

MOHAN SINGH, SARDAR BAHADUR (1897-1961), aesthete, philanthropist and privy counsellor, was born on 6 June 1897 at Rawalpindi in a family of note founded by Sadhu Singh (d. 1798), who under Sardar Milkha Singh Thehpuria, founder of present town of Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan), was entrusted with the duty of

MEGH RAJ (d. 1864), the third son of Misr Divan Chand, starting as a clerk in Gobindgarh Fort at Amritsar under Maharaja Ranjit Singh, became head of the treasury at Amritsar in 1816. He held this position until the Maharaja`s death in 1839 soon after which Prince Nau Nihal Singh

MATTAN, an old town 4 km east of Anantnag (33°44`N, 75°13`E) in Kashmir, is sacred to Guru Nanak, who visited the valley during his journey to the north at the beginning of the sixteenth century. According to the Purdtanjanam Sdkhi, he held a long discourse with a learned Brahman,