AJMER SIṄGH was the name given a seventeenth-century Muslim recluse of Chhatteāṇā, a village in present-day Farīdkoṭ district of the Punjab, as he received the initiatory rites of the Khālsā. His original name was Ibrāhīm, popularly shortened to Brahmī or Bahmī. According to an old chronicle, Mālvā Desh Raṭan di Sākhī Pothī, Ibrāhīm had himself dug a grave, duly lined with brick and mortar into which he intended to descend, through a hole he had kept for the purpose, when his time came. But when he met Gurū Gobind Siṅgh, who had come to Chhatteāṇā after the battle of Muktsar (1705), he was so deeply moved that he requested to be admitted to the Khālsā fold. The Gurū, says Bhāī Santokh Siṅgh, Srī Gur Pratāp Sūraj Granth, observed, "Being a Muslim desiring with conviction to join the Khālsā Panth, you are setting a good example. Among the Khālsā it is only proper that every one, high or low, take the pāhul (baptism of the double-edged sword). " Ibrāhīm received the pāhul at the hands of Bhāī Mān Siṅgh, and the Gurū gave him his new name, Ajmer Siṅgh. Ajmer Siṅgh diligently learnt the Sikh prayers which he regularly recited morning and evening.