Bhai Jetha was born at Lahore in 1534 and orphaned young. He sold boiled grams as a child. He came to Goindwal, worked on the baoli, married Bibi Bhani Ji, daughter of Guru Amar Das Ji, and was appointed the fourth Guru in 1574.
He founded the town first called Ramdaspur and then Amritsar, on land in the Majha, and had the tank dug. He invited traders of fifty-two kinds to settle there, which is why Amritsar became a commercial city and not only a religious one. The bazaars named for those trades are still named for them.
The Lavan, the four stanzas sung at a Sikh marriage, are his. The Anand Karaj as a rite is built on them.
He composed 679 hymns. He also set the pattern by which the Guru's authority passed to his youngest son, Arjan, over the objection of the eldest, Prithi Chand, whose descendants formed the Minas and remained a rival line for generations.
He died at Goindwal in 1581 at forty-six.
The land for the tank was acquired from the villages of Tung and Gumtala, and the accounts differ on whether it was bought or granted. The tank was dug before the town existed and the town grew around the work.
The site was chosen in the open Majha with no fort over it and no ruler's protection, which is a different kind of foundation from Goindwal or Kartarpur and is why the town needed the traders as much as it needed the water.
He established the masand system to gather offerings from the sangats, and he was the first Guru to appoint a successor from within his own family.