Guru Amar Das Ji came to Sikhi late. He was in his sixties, a Vaishnav who had gone twenty times on pilgrimage to the Ganga, when he heard Bibi Amro Ji, daughter of Guru Angad Dev Ji, singing a hymn of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. He went to Khadur and served eleven or twelve years, drawing water for the Guru's bath every morning from the Beas.
He became Guru in 1552 at seventy-three and held it for twenty-two years, to ninety-five.
He built the baoli at Goindwal, eighty-four steps down to the water, and made it a place of gathering, which gave the Sikhs a pilgrimage centre of their own for the first time.
He organised the sangat into twenty-two manjis, seats with an appointed head, spread across northern India, and appointed women among the preachers. He set Vaisakhi and Diwali as the days the sangat would assemble. He required that anyone coming to see him first eat in the langar, sitting in line, which broke commensality rules in a way nothing else in the region was doing.
He opposed sati and the veil in explicit terms and his compositions say so directly. The Anand Sahib is his, and is recited at the close of every Sikh service and at every marriage.
Akbar came to Goindwal and ate in the langar before the audience, sitting on the floor. The story is told in every account and the grant of land that followed became Amritsar.
He was seventy-three when he became Guru and he built the institutions: the manjis, the baoli at Goindwal, the fixed gatherings at Vaisakhi and Diwali, and the rule that a visitor eats in the langar first.
He composed the Anand Sahib and he took positions against sati, against purdah and in favour of remarriage, in the sixteenth century and in writing.
He appointed his son-in-law rather than a son, which set the line that ran to the tenth Guru through Bibi Bhani Ji.