Guru Nanak

According to Sikh tradition, Nanak was born in 1469 at Rai Bhoi di Talwandi (now Nankana Sahib in Pakistan). Sikhs celebrate his birthday on the full moon of Kartik (November), whereas the oldest biographical sources name the month of Vaisakh (April). His father Mehta Kalu was the village accountant (patwari); his mother was called Tripta and his elder sister Nanaki.

Accounts of his youth come mainly from the janamsakhis, hagiographic biographies from a later period. They show him as a reflective child with an interest in religion and mention a friendship with the Muslim musician Mardana. What is historical is hard to establish. He married Sulakhani; the couple had two sons, Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das.

At Sultanpur Lodhi, where his sister Nanaki lived with her husband Jai Ram, he worked in the storehouse (modikhana) of Daulat Khan, the governor of Lahore on behalf of the Delhi Sultanate. According to the janamsakhis he disappeared around 1499 while bathing in the river Bein and returned after a few days with the message that there was 'no Hindu and no Muslim'; tradition places his divine commission here.

According to the janamsakhis he then made four long journeys (udasis) through India and beyond, in some accounts as far as Mecca and Baghdad, often together with Mardana. Historians treat these accounts with caution, because they were recorded long after his death and contain miracle stories. In a set of hymns, the Babarvani, he refers to Babur's invasion of Punjab.

Around 1522 he settled at Kartarpur on the Ravi, on land donated by a follower. He lived there as a farmer and head of a household and led communal singing (kirtan) and prayer. Communal meals (langar) were held to which people of every background came. His teaching centred on one God (Ik Onkar), recitation of the Name, honest work and sharing with others.

At the beginning of the 16th century Punjab belonged to the Delhi Sultanate under the Lodi dynasty. The population included Hindus and Muslims, in a society divided by caste. In 1526 Babur defeated the last Lodi sultan at Panipat and founded the Mughal Empire. Political violence and changing rule recur in his hymns.

Religiously, the region knew the bhakti movement, Sufi orders and the yoga traditions of the Naths. Poets such as Kabir and Ravidas and Sufis such as Baba Farid questioned ritual, caste and outward piety; verses by them also appear later in the Guru Granth Sahib. Nanak took part in that conversation but formed a community of his own around Ik Onkar, the one God.

His following, called Kartaris by others and later the Nanak Panth, consisted according to researchers mainly of relatives, friends and other Khatris; later many Jatt farmers joined. How many followers he had at his death cannot be estimated from the surviving source material.

Communal meals and singing brought together people of different backgrounds; in his hymns he criticises, among other things, the caste order and outward ritual. His successors built up the community. Guru Arjan compiled the Adi Granth in 1604, from which the Guru Granth Sahib developed. According to the Sikhs all ten gurus shared the same divine light; this is an article of faith of the community itself.

According to Sikh sources Nanak died on 22 September 1539 at Kartarpur, aged seventy. He did not appoint one of his sons but Bhai Lehna as his successor and gave him the name Angad ('part of yourself'), and so the line of gurus began. Later stories about his life and death belong to the janamsakhi tradition and have not been independently confirmed.

His name is linked to 974 hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib, including the Japji and the Asa di Var. Kartarpur Sahib lies in Pakistan; since 2019 the Kartarpur Corridor has allowed Indian pilgrims to visit this shrine. Sikhism recognises him as its founder; historians stress that the biographies date from a later period and that his own hymns are the earliest source.