Kapurthala state belonged to the Ahluwalia house, descended from Jassa Singh Ahluwalia Ji, and it ran from the misl period to 1947 without ever being large.
Its territory was scattered and included a block in Awadh granted for services in 1857, which is why a small Doaba state had revenue out of all proportion to its map.
The Jagatjit Palace, completed in 1908 on the model of Versailles and Fontainebleau, is now a Sainik School. The Moorish Mosque of 1930, modelled on the Koutoubia at Marrakesh, was built by the same Sikh maharaja for his Muslim subjects and functions as a mosque.
The state was a Sikh ruling house over a largely non-Sikh population, and it was administered well enough that its small capital has public buildings out of proportion to its size.
The Rail Coach Factory, opened in 1986, employs more than six thousand people and sits on the edge of the town.
Kanjli wetland on the Kali Bein, made in 1870 as a canal headwork, is a Ramsar site and takes winter waterfowl.
The state's population was largely Muslim before 1947 and the town's fabric reflects it, including the mosque the maharaja built for them.
Sultanpur Lodhi in this district is where Guru Nanak Sahib Ji worked in the granary and where the Bein runs, and it is the older and the more visited of the district's two centres.