Hisar was founded as Hisar-e-Firoza by Firoz Shah Tughlaq in 1354, with a canal cut from the Jamuna to water it. The country around it, dry and open, is the eastern edge of the Punjab plain and was raided from and fought over for four centuries.
George Thomas, an Irish sailor who deserted in Madras and worked his way north as a mercenary, took Hansi in 1798, repaired its fort, raised his own troops, cast his own guns and minted his own coin. He held a territory of some fifty villages for four years and fought the Sikh chiefs of the Cis-Sutlej repeatedly. A combined Maratha and French-officered force put him out in 1801. He died the next year on his way to Calcutta, aged about forty-six.
Rakhigarhi, in the same district, is one of the largest Harappan sites anywhere, larger in area than Harappa itself. Much of it lies under two modern villages and it was not seriously excavated until the 1990s.
Hisar holds the Central Institute for Research on Buffaloes and one of the largest government cattle farms in Asia, on land the British took for army remount breeding.
The district went to Haryana in 1966. Its speech is Bagri and Haryanvi at the two ends and Punjabi in the towns along the old canal.
The town was founded by Firoz Shah Tughlaq in 1354 and its fort, palace and mosque from that period stand in the middle of the modern town.
It sits on the dry edge of the Punjab plain and was always marginal agricultural country until the canals reached it, which is why the government cattle farm and the agricultural university are there.
It went to Haryana in 1966. Its Punjabi population, largely resettled after 1947, is substantial and the town is one of the places where the language boundary and the state boundary do not agree.