- Lived:
- 22 December 1666, Patna, Bihar → Anandpur in the Punjab foothills, the wars of 1688–1705, and a last journey south to Nanded on the Godāvarī, where he died on 7 October 1708
- Field:
- religion, war and poetry — tenth and last human Guru of the Sikhs; creator of the Khālsā; commander in a dozen battles; first-rank poet in Braj and Persian
- The Big Idea:
- At Baisakhi 1699 he called for five heads, initiated the five men who offered them — and then knelt and asked those five to initiate him. Nine years later, dying, he ended the line of Gurus altogether: authority passed forever to a scripture and a community, where it still rests.
- In their words:
- "When all other means have failed, it is lawful to take the sword in hand." (the Zafarnāma, his Persian letter to the emperor Aurangzeb, verse 22; our rendering)
- If you remember one thing:
- He is the founder who submitted to his own creation and then abolished his own office — initiated by his initiates in 1699, succeeded by a book and a people in 1708 — and he paid for the institution he built with his father, his mother and all four of his sons.