People, practice and institutions
Sikh institutions in historical context
Follow documented lives and institutional histories, with religious self-description and historical interpretation kept visible.
8 entries · 16 min reading, calculated from article text
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Your reading goal
Place a person or institution within its particular period and recognise what each source can establish.
- 01People · 2 min read
Guru Nanak: work, worship and the first Sikh community
Guru Nanak’s life connects Talwandi, Sultanpur and Kartarpur with hymns, work and the shaping of a community. Later stories and images preserve his memory in different ways.
- 02People · 2 min read
Mata Khivi: the woman who sustained the Guru’s langar
Mata Khivi organised the community kitchen at Khadur Sahib; her service is remembered in Sikh scripture and later histories.
- 03History · 2 min read
The development of Sikh institutions: congregations, regional networks and service
Dharamsalas, manjis and masands connected worship, service and regional organisation. Their changing functions show how Sikh institutions developed across generations rather than in one founding moment.
- 04History · 2 min read
The founding of Amritsar: a settlement, a sacred tank and a growing centre
Amritsar developed through settlement, tank construction and institutions under successive Gurus. The sources attach different founding dates to different stages and preserve alternative accounts of the land.
- 05History · 2 min read
The compilation of the Adi Granth: collection, organisation and interpretation
Learn how Guru Arjan’s 1604 compilation organised earlier compositions, and how reference accounts and manuscript scholarship interpret it.
- 06History · 2 min read
The founding of the Khalsa
At Anandpur in 1699, Guru Gobind Singh established the Khalsa. Initiation, discipline and a direct relationship with the Guru reshaped the Sikh community.
- 07Communities & faiths · 2 min read
The gurdwara as a community institution
Look beyond a building’s exterior to understand worship, gathering, hospitality and the work that sustains a gurdwara.
- 08Communities & faiths · 2 min read
Sikh pilgrimage circuits: sacred places, memory and divided routes
Sikh journeys connect sites of the Gurus with institutions and family memory. The five Takhts form one important geography; Partition reshaped access to places now in Pakistan.
A question to carry with you
Choose one claim from your reading. Identify its source and locator. What does that source directly establish, and what would need a second source?