In 1691 Alif Khan, a Mughal commander sent to collect arrears of tribute from the hill states, was resisted by Raja Bhim Chand of Kahlur, who asked Guru Gobind Singh Ji for help. The Guru came.
The battle was fought on the Beas at Nadaun and the Mughal force was driven off. The Guru's own account is again in the Bachitra Natak.
The alliance is worth noting because Bhim Chand had been on the other side at Bhangani three years earlier and would be on the other side again at Anandpur later. The hill states' relations with the Guru shifted with each season's calculation.
The Guru stayed some days at Nadaun afterward.
It is the only occasion on which a Guru fought alongside the hill rajas rather than against them, and it complicates the standard telling of the period considerably.
Alif Khan withdrew and the tribute was not collected that year. The hill rajas resumed paying it soon afterward, which is the pattern of the whole period.
Nadaun is on the left bank of the Beas in Hamirpur district of Himachal, and the Katoch fort still stands above the town. A gurdwara marks the stay. It is one of the few places connected with the tenth Guru that lies outside Punjab and outside the pilgrimage circuit, and it gets almost nobody.
The Bachittar Natak describes the battle and the Guru's own part in it. It is one of very few engagements of the period for which a first person account exists on either side.