The Bhangi was the largest and richest of the misls for much of the second half of the eighteenth century, holding Lahore, Amritsar, Multan for a period, and a wide belt of the Majha. Its founders were Chhajja Singh and Bhuma Singh, and its great sardars were Hari Singh, Jhanda Singh and Ganda Singh.
It took the Zamzama gun, cast at Lahore in 1757 for Ahmad Shah Abdali's governor, and the gun is known as the Bhangian di top for that reason. It stands outside the Lahore Museum and is the gun in the opening line of Kipling's Kim.
The Bhangi sardars held Lahore from 1765. By 1799 the three then in the city, Chet Singh, Sahib Singh and Mohar Singh, had lost the confidence of its people, and Ranjit Singh Ji was invited in.
The misl was reduced piece by piece over the following decade. Amritsar was taken from the Bhangis in 1805.
The name is generally derived from the sardars' use of bhang. The misl that held Lahore for thirty-four years is remembered mostly through a gun and an etymology.
Jhanda Singh and Ganda Singh took Multan in 1772 and held it, which put a Sikh garrison further down the Chenab than any misl had reached. It went back to the Afghans within a few years and was not recovered until 1818.
Its strength was cavalry and the figure usually given is upward of ten thousand horse in the best years, more than any other single misl could put in the field. All the misl numbers are estimates made by later writers and none of the forces was ever counted.
Its sardars lie at Amritsar and the sites of their havelis in the walled city are known by name and marked by nothing. The gun is in Lahore, the territory went into the Lahore state, and the largest of the twelve has no monument anywhere at all.