AHMAD, SHAIKH (1564-1624), celebrated Muslim thinker and theologian of the Naqshbandi Sufi order, was born on 26 May 1564 at Sirhind in present day Patiala district of the Punjab. He received his early education at the hands of his father. Shaikh `Abd al-Ahad, and later studied at Siaiko, now in Pakistan. About the year AD 1599, he met Khwaja Muhammad al-Baki bi-Allah, who initiated him into the Naqshbandi order. Shaikh Ahmad soon became a leading figure in that school and wrote numerous letters and treatises on many fine points of the Sufi doctrine such as the concepts of prophecy {nubuwwah) and sainthood (walayah) and the relationship between shari`ah, i.e. religious law, and tariqah, the mystic path.
BHUPINDER SINGH, LIEUTENANTGENERAL MAHARAJA SIR (1891-1931), Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India, Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire, Knight of the Order of the British Empire, ruler of the Sikh state of Patiala, was one of the most colourful and influential Indian princes of the interwar years. Tall, robust, dashingly handsome, he was to the British the personification of the Punjabi martial races, a veritable "flower of Oriental aristocracy." In his own eyes, and in the eyes of many of his coreligionists, he was the temporal leader of Sikhism.
BISHAN SINGH (d. 1868) was like his father, Sultan Singh, in the Ghorcharha regiment of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. In Maharaja Sher Singh`s time, he was placed in charge of the artillery park at Lahore. After the annexation of the Punjab by the British, Bishan Singh joined the 2nd Punjab Irregular Cavalry raised in 1849, and received the rank of Risaldar. During the uprising of 1857, he marched to Delhi with a squadron commanded by Sir Dighton Macnaghten Probyn and served his new masters with distinction.
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