Shahpurkandi Fort

Shahpur Kandi stands on the bank of the Ravi, in the Pathankot area, on a rock above the river with long views up the Ravi valley towards the hills. The fort was first built in 1518 by the Pathania Rajput chief Jaspal Singh. In the 17th century the place was renamed Shahpur after the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. Bhao Singh, also called Murid Khan, a son of Raja Rup Singh of Nurpur, converted to Islam and received Shahpur as a jagir. He rebuilt the fort in stone. Shah Jahan’s reign also saw a canal dug from Kamal village near Shahpurkandi to Lahore, to send water to the Shalimar Garden. The fort became the capital of the Muslim branch of the Pathania kingdom. Its lands later extended to Nurpur and Kangra. Tombs of its governors and their wives, and a mosque, stood near the fort on the road towards Pathankot. The village below had a Shiva temple with older carved ornaments and a large stone tank. In 1815 Ranjit Singh overran Nurpur and its last raja, Bir Singh, lost his lands, and Shahpur’s story merged with Nurpur’s. After the Treaty of Lahore in 1846, the Shahpur Kandi area passed to the British. In August 1848 Wazir Ram Singh Pathania, a descendant of Jaspal Singh and son of the late Raja’s Wazir, seized the fort from the British. He was driven out within days. In January 1849 he returned with two Sikh regiments and held a hill position at Dalla Dhar. He was captured and sent as a prisoner to Sujanpur. Two British officers died in the fighting, and a white monument to them stands on a hillock above the Shahpur-Dalhousie road. The fort was destroyed after the rising.