Phul was a Sidhu-Brar Jat of the Malwa in the seventeenth century, whose family had followed Guru Hargobind. The Mughal governors of Sirhind made him chaudhary, a revenue collector, of the dry Jangal country south of the Sutlej, and he founded the village that bears his name.
His sons founded the lines that became the Phulkian states: from Tiloka came the rajas of Nabha and Jind, and from Rama came the rajas of Patiala, among them Ala Singh. Under British protection from 1809 the Phulkian states survived as princely states until they joined India in 1948 and were merged into the Patiala and East Punjab States Union.
