Editing Ranjit Singh (section)

===Muslim accounts===
The mid 19th-century Muslim historians, such as Shahamat Ali who experienced the Sikh Empire first hand, presented a different view on Ranjit Singh's Empire and governance.<ref name="bayly1996p233" /><ref>{{cite book|author=Chitralekha Zutshi|title=Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rEluAAAAMAAJ |year=2004 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-521939-5 |pages=39–41 }}</ref> According to Ali, Ranjit Singh's government was despotic, and he was a mean monarch in contrast to the Mughals.<ref name="bayly1996p233">{{cite book|author=Christopher Alan Bayly|title=Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8bqEzPPp8xIC |year=1996|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-66360-1 |pages=233 }}</ref> The initial momentum for the Empire building in these accounts is stated to be Ranjit Singh led Khalsa army's "insatiable appetite for plunder", their desire for "fresh cities to pillage", and eliminating the Mughal era "revenue intercepting intermediaries between the peasant-cultivator and the treasury".<ref name="Low1991p263">{{cite book|author=Clive Dewey | editor=D. A. Low|title=Political Inheritance of Pakistan|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VaeuCwAAQBAJ |year=1991|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=978-1-349-11556-3 |pages=263–265 }}</ref>

According to Ishtiaq Ahmed, Ranjit Singh's rule led to further persecution of Muslims in Kashmir, expanding{{clarify| reason=What does this word mean.| date=April 2021}} the previously selective persecution of Shia Muslims and Hindus by Afghan Sunni Muslim rulers between 1752 and 1819 before Kashmir became part of his Sikh Empire.<ref name="iahmed1998">{{cite book|author=Ishtiaq Ahmed|title=State, Nation and Ethnicity in Contemporary South Asia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=czSm7cmhgA0C&pg=PA140 |year=1998|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-85567-578-0 |pages=139–140}}</ref> Bikramjit Hasrat describes Ranjit Singh as a "benevolent despot".<ref>{{cite book|author=Bikramajit Hasrat|title=Life and Times of Ranjit Singh: A Saga of Benevolent Despotism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UPgdAAAAMAAJ|year=1977|oclc= 6303625 | publisher=V.V. Research Institute|pages=83, 198}}</ref>
The Muslim accounts of Ranjit Singh's rule were questioned by Sikh historians of the same era. For example, Ratan Singh Bhangu in 1841 wrote that these accounts were not accurate, and according to Anne Murphy, he remarked, "when would a Musalman praise the Sikhs?"<ref>{{cite book|author=Anne Murphy|title=The Materiality of the Past: History and Representation in Sikh Tradition|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r13hjYfoI6MC |year=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-991629-0 |pages=121–126 }}</ref> In contrast, the colonial era British military officer Hugh Pearse in 1898 criticised Ranjit Singh's rule, as one founded on "violence, treachery and blood".<ref name="Alexander Gardner">{{cite book|last=Gardner|first=Alexander|title=Memoirs of Alexander Gardner&nbsp;– Colonel of Artillery in the Service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh|year= 1898| chapter-url=https://archive.org/stream/soldiertraveller00gardiala#page/210/mode/2up |publisher=William Blackwood & Sons| pages=211|chapter=Chapter XII}}</ref> Sohan Seetal disagrees with this account and states that Ranjit Singh had encouraged his army to respond with a "[[tit for tat]]" against the enemy, violence for violence, blood for blood, plunder for plunder.<ref>{{cite book|author=Sohan Singh Seetal|title=Rise of the Sikh Power and Maharaja Ranjeet Singh|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TzRuAAAAMAAJ |year=1971|oclc=6917931| publisher=Dhanpat Rai|page=56}} (note: the original book has 667 pages; the open access version of the same book released by Lahore Publishers on archive.com has deleted about 500 pages of this book; see the original)</ref>