Founder

Guru Nanak (1469-1539), founder of the Sikh religion, and the first of ten Sikh gurus, or prophets. Nanak was born into a family of Hindu Khatris (merchants) in the village of Talvandi, near the city of Lahore, Pakistan. He appears to have had an unexceptional upbringing. He married at a young age and he and his wife had two sons. As a young man he was employed as an accountant in the service of Daulat Khan Lodi, a Mughal administrator in the northern Indian town of Sultanpur.

Some time in his late 20s or early 30s Nanak experienced a religious calling, and in the company of a Muslim bard named Mardana, set off on a lengthy series of pilgrimages in search of enlightenment. He finally returned permanently to the northern Indian region of the Punjab about 1520. He settled in the village of Kartarpur on the banks of the River Rāvi, to the north of Lahore. In the years that followed, his reputation as a spiritual master spread, and he attracted a steadily increasing number of devotees, whom he described as Sikhs (learners). Nanak died in Kartarpur in 1539, having appointed one of his most devoted followers—whom he renamed Angad (my limb)—as his successor. Over time, the community at Kartarpur developed the distinctive elements of the Sikh religious outlook and way of life. Although Nanak’s followers subsequently produced a great deal of literature in praise of their founder, scholarly dispute persists over the accuracy of many of these stories.