A well on the edge of Sialkot is called Puran Bhagat da khooh. The story attached to it is one of the four or five great Punjabi qissas and is older than any written version of it.
Puran was the son of Raja Salwan of Sialkot. His stepmother Luna accused him after he refused her. His hands and feet were cut off and he was thrown into the well. He was found and healed, and lived as an ascetic under Gorakhnath. Rani Luna and the Raja, childless and old, later came to him and were given a son, Rasalu, who became the second great figure of the cycle.
Qadaryar's Qissa Puran Bhagat, written in the nineteenth century, is the version most Punjabis know. Shiv Kumar Batalvi's Loona, 1965, retold the story from Luna's side and treated her as a young woman married to an old man and blamed for it. That book won the Sahitya Akademi award and changed how the story is taught.
Guru Nanak Dev Ji visited Sialkot with Bhai Mardana Ji and the site is marked by Gurdwara Beri Sahib.
Sialkot today makes a large share of the world's hand-stitched footballs and much of its surgical instruments. The trade is old and was built on local metal and leather work.
The town is old and its Puran Bhagat well is one of the oldest continuously identified sites in the Punjab, attached to a story told across the whole region.
It was the sports goods and surgical instrument centre of undivided Punjab, and it still is for Pakistan. The Jalandhar industry is what the Hindu and Sikh manufacturers rebuilt after 1947.
Iqbal was born here and Faiz came from a village in the district. Two of the largest names in Urdu poetry came out of one Punjabi town within thirty-four years.