Sultanpur Lodhi

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Sultanpur Lodhi v • d • e Punjab (India) • India
District(s)	Kapurthala
Time zone	IST (UTC+5:30)
Population	52,389 (2005)

Coordinates: ° N ° E

This article is about a city in Punjab, India. For other uses, see Sultanpur.

Sultanpur Lodhi is a city and a municipal council in Kapurthala district in the Indian state of Punjab. It was founded by Sultan Khan Lodhi who was a general of Gazni in the A.D 1103. It was named after its founder which has been also mentioned in en-a-akbari. This town lies on the left bank of a river called Kali Bein which runs 6 miles north to the intersection of Beas and Sutlej.

[edit] History

The origins of this town took place during the reign of the Sikan Lodhi who was a Sultan of Delhi. He assigned the construction of Sultanpur to Nawab Daulat Khan of Lahore who gave a very beautiful landscape to the environment of this town and tranformed it into two new towns called Nakhilstan (Green Patch) and Shikargah ( Playhunt). However later it was rebuilt by the same Nawab. At that time this town was located on the Grand Trunk Road which ran from Delhi to Lahore. However that revolutionized this town into a great business centre and one of the most important centre for Muslim education in Northern India at that time. It is said that sons of the Emperor Shah Jahan, Dara Shikoh and Aurangzeb, have studied their higher education at the University of Sultanpur. Well into the next two centuries and during the Mughal Empire, it maintained its position as the centre of the Muslim culture. Than Sikh Chiefs established their kingdoms in Punjab after the fall of the Moghal Empire. One of the chiefs called Sardar Fateh Singh, the son of Sardar Jassa Singh, seized the town of Sultanpur to the state of Kapurthala in 1777. Since than it has been a part of the State of Kapurthala but in 1951 Kapurthala became one of the districts of Pepsu. Now Sultanpur is a sub division of Kapurthala.

The founder of Sikhism Guru Nank Dev ji spent 14 years in this town where he worked for the Nawab Daulat Khan Lodhi.^{[citation needed]} There are many Gurdwaras (Sikh Temples) related with his life in Sultanpur Lodhi. Some of the main ones are Gurdwara Ber Sahib, Gurdwara Sant Ghat, Gurdwara Hatt Sahib, Gurdwara Antarjami and Gurdwara Guru ka bag. Bibi Nanki, the sister of the Guruji also lived in Sultanpur Lodhi and there is a Gurdwara in her memory too.

[edit] Demographics

As of 2001 India census,^GRIndia Sultanpur Lodhi had a population of 15,653. Males constitute 54% of the population and females 46%. Sultanpur Lodhi has an average literacy rate of 71%, higher than the national average of 59.5%: male literacy is 73%, and female literacy is 68%. In Sultanpur Lodhi, 11% of the population is under 6 years of age. This town extends only to 4 square miles and it is 26 miles away from Jalandhar and 17 miles from Kapurthala.