Adina Beg was born around 1710 near Lahore into an Arain family and rose from a clerk to become the faujdar of the Jalandhar Doab.
He was the great survivor of the eighteenth-century Punjab: he served the Mughals, then the Afghans, then betrayed them; he negotiated with the Sikhs and fought them; and he invited the Marathas into the Punjab in 1758 to drive out the Afghans, with Sikh help. For a few months he was governor of the whole Punjab.
He employed Jassa Singh Ramgarhia for a time and persecuted the Sikhs when it suited him. He died in September 1758 at Batala, at the height of his power, and his death left the field open to the Sikh misls.
