Ranjit Singh was born in Gujranwala's old market
Punjab's "City of Wrestlers," Pakistan's fifth-most populous and fourth-largest in the province, is younger than nearby Lahore or Sialkot. Founded in the eighteenth century, it capped the Sukerchakia Misl from 1763 and briefly the Sikh Empire until Ranjit Singh—born in Purani Mandi in 1780—moved the capital to Lahore in 1799.
The name means abode of the Gujjars; scholarship links it to Serai Gujran near today's Khiyali Gate more than to folklore about a Persian-wheel owner. After Aurangzeb's 1707 death and Abdali's mid-century raids, Sikh misls filled the vacuum. Charat Singh built a fort here between 1756 and 1758, made it capital in 1763, and beat Afghan attempts to root him out. Maha Singh expanded the hold; rival Chattha and Bhatti clans fought bitter local wars before Ranjit Singh secured the Doab.
Hari Singh Nalwa, granted the city as jagir after 1799, raised a mud wall and set the grid still used today, holding the estate until 1837. By 1839 bazaars held some five hundred shops and pleasure gardens. The British took the area in 1848, incorporated a municipality in 1867, rebuilt Brandreth, Khiyali, and Lahori Gates by 1869, and raised a central clock tower in 1906. Rail arrived in 1881; the 1901 census counted 29,224 people. Khanki Headworks (1892) irrigated about three million acres.
Today Gujranwala is Pakistan's third-largest industrial centre after Karachi and Faisalabad, contributing roughly five to nine percent of national GDP within the Golden Triangle with Sialkot and Gujrat. Presbyterian work began with an 1875 church and an 1877 seminary. April 1919 riots after Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh massacre burned courts and the clock tower; RAF machine-guns and bombs answered processions—a scar on a city that still styles itself a forge of industry and wrestlers.
Source: Gujranwala
