Samanaਸਮਾਣਾ

History

Samana's history is among the longest of any town in the Patiala region. Tradition traces it to the era of Raja Jaipal, the Hindu Shahi king; in 1192 the Ghurid general Qutb-ud-Din Aibak — soon to be the first Sultan of Delhi — was endowed with its territory, making Samana one of the earliest Muslim-held towns of the Punjab plain. Through the Sultanate and Mughal periods it remained an important qasba of the Sirhind province.

In Sikh memory Samana has a dark name: it was the town of the executioners. Sayyad Jalal-ud-Din of Samana carried out the execution of Guru Tegh Bahadur at Chandni Chowk, Delhi, in November 1675, and the Beg brothers of Samana were the executioners of the younger Sahibzadas at Sirhind in 1704. Retribution came in 1709, when Banda Singh Bahadur sacked the town; the Mughals retook it in 1710, and in 1742 Maharaja Ala Singh of Patiala recovered it for the Sikh side. Two historic gurdwaras of Guru Tegh Bahadur — who passed through Samana — commemorate the town's Sikh chapter.

Geography & people

Samana lies in Patiala district, about 30 kilometres southwest of Patiala city, on the roads toward Patran and the Haryana border. The 2011 census counted 54,072 residents in the municipal council. Punjabi is the everyday language; the population is mixed, with Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. The town serves a rich agricultural hinterland — wheat, paddy and vegetables — and its grain market is among the busy ones of the district. Small agro-processing units and the town's cloth and utensil bazaars round out an economy rooted in the surrounding fields.

Places of interest

The two historic gurdwaras associated with Guru Tegh Bahadur are Samana's principal shrines. The old town's mohallas preserve the qasba layout of the Sultanate and Mughal eras, with old havelis and mosques among the lanes. The town's bazaars — grain, cloth, and everyday goods — carry the bustle of a district market town, and the old mosques among the lanes recall the centuries when Samana was a qasba of the Sirhind province.

Notable people

Maharaja Ala Singh, the founder of Patiala State who recovered Samana in 1742, is the town's Sikh-era figure; Banda Singh Bahadur, who sacked it in 1709, belongs to its story of retribution. Sayyad Jalal-ud-Din and the Beg brothers are remembered — in Sikh histories, infamously — as the executioners of 1675 and 1704. Samana's history is thus carried less by heroes than by the weight of what happened here.