Faridkot takes its name from Baba Farid Ji, who is said to have been made to carry earth for the building of the fort here and to have been recognised by the local ruler, who then gave the town his name. The fort, Qila Mubarak, stands in the middle of the town.
The state of Faridkot was ruled by the Brar Sidhu family and was one of the Punjab princely states, supporting the British in 1857 and surviving until 1948.
The last ruler, Raja Harinder Singh, died in 1989 leaving a will that transferred almost all the estate to a trust. His daughters contested it. In 2013 a court held the will forged, and appeals ran on for years afterward. The estate involved is among the largest ever litigated in India and includes the fort, properties across several states and a collection of vintage cars.
The town holds a Guru Granth Sahib Ji manuscript tradition, the Faridkot Teeka, a nineteenth-century Punjabi commentary on the scripture commissioned under state patronage and still used.
The district was created in 1972 and reduced in 1995 when Moga and Muktsar were carved out.
The state was ruled by a Brar Sidhu family and took its name from Baba Farid Ji, who is said in tradition to have stayed at the site.
Qila Mubarak, the Raj Mahal and the Darbar Ganj are in the town, and the last ruler's estate was the subject of one of the longest property cases in Indian legal history.
The state ran a school, a hospital and a small library out of its own revenue, and the buildings that held them are standing and mostly locked. What was in the library is not known.