In 1756 Ahmad Shah Durrani started his fourth raid on India for plunder. He managed to successfully raid the city of Delhi and captured gold, jewellery and thousands of Hindu women as slaves. But on his way back his baggage train was repetitively ambushed and attacked by the Sikh forces, who liberated the slaves and returned the plunder. Durrani managed to escape and vowed to take revenge against the Sikhs. Because Durrani could not lay his hands on the elusive bands of Sikhs, he determined to attack their holy city Amritsar, the Harimandir Sahib was blown up, and the surrounding pool filled with the entrails of slaughtered cows.Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, Volume I: 1469–1839, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1978, pp. 144–45.
