Battle of Attock
The Sikh Empire's first major victory over the Afghans, securing the fort at the Indus crossing.
Attock, where the Grand Trunk Road crosses the Indus, was the key to the north-west. In 1813 its Afghan governor, faced with the advance of Wazir Fateh Khan, chief minister of Kabul, handed the fort to Ranjit Singh rather than to his own countrymen.
Fateh Khan marched to retake it. On 13 July 1813, at Haidru near Attock, a Sikh army under Diwan Mokham Chand, with Hari Singh Nalwa, met the Afghans in the scorching heat. After a hard battle, the Afghan army broke, and Fateh Khan's brother Dost Mohammad Khan was wounded.
It was the first great Sikh victory over the Afghans in open battle, and it turned the tide of a hundred years. The fort of Attock remained Sikh, and the Indus was now the frontier.
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