Between the collapse of Mughal authority and the rise of Lahore, Punjab was held by Sikh confederacies called misls. The word means equal, or alike, and it describes the arrangement: each misl ran its own territory, kept its own horse, and answered to the Sarbat Khalsa rather than to any one chief.
The twelve usually named are Ahluwalia, Bhangi, Kanhaiya, Nakai, Dallewalia, Faizullapuria or Singhpuria, Karorsinghia, Nishanwalia, Ramgarhia, Shaheedan, Sukerchakia and Phulkian, though the Phulkian states south of the Sutlej are often counted separately.
They fought the Afghans, they fought each other, and between raids they collected rakhi, a protection payment that functioned as the tax base of a state nobody had declared.
Maharaja Ranjit Singh Ji came from the Sukerchakia. He took Lahore in 1799 at eighteen and spent the next two decades absorbing the others.
On the map this is the one period drawn as hatching rather than as a solid territory, because a solid territory is exactly what it was not.
A misl was a band under a sardar, and the twelve together made the Dal Khalsa, which met at Amritsar at Baisakhi and Diwali and took decisions by gurmata in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.
The rakhi system was how they held country: a village paid a fifth of its revenue for protection, which was cheaper and more reliable than what the collapsing administration offered.
They fought each other constantly and combined when the Afghans came. That arrangement held the Punjab for about forty years and was ended by one of their own number.