Jean-Baptiste (Giovanni Battista) Ventura, born Rubino (25 May 1794 – 3 April 1858), was an Italian soldier, mercenary in India, general in Maharaja Ranjit Singh's Sarkar-i-Khalsa, and early archaeologist of the Punjab region of the Sikh Empire. Biography Ventura was born in Finale di Modena (now Finale Emilia) in the Duchy of Modena to Gavriel Massarani, a Jewish merchant and Vittoria Massarani, a Catholic. The surname Ventura derives from Buonaventura, Italian for "Mazal Tov", a Hebrew-Sephardic surname originating in Iberia following the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Ventura received a conventional Jewish education and at the age of seventeen, enrolled as a volunteer in the militia of the Kingdom of Italy, later serving with Napoleon's imperial army in the Queens's Dragons. After the abdication of Napoleon and the dissolution of the Army of Italy in April 1814 he returned to Finale. In 1817, his revolutionary and Napoleonic sympathies became known to the local authorities following a dispute between him and a member of the reactionary Ducal police. As such, he was obliged to leave the country. In 1817, persecuted by the local authorities for his revolutionary ideas and his sympathies for Napoleon, he had to flee from Finale because of an argument between him and a member of the reactionary police of the Duke of Modena Francesco IV. He went first to Trieste, and then to Constantinople, where he was for a time a ship-broker. He changed his name in Jean-Baptiste to hide his Jewish origins. Having learned that Persia was seeking the services of European soldiers, he obtained a commission as an officer and helped train the Shah's army with European military methods. He soon obtained the rank of colonel in the army of Prince Mohamed Ali Mirza, the Shah's son. Upon the death of the Shah in 1822, Ventura offered his services to his successor, Abbas Mirza. In the latter's service, however, were a number of English officers who were decidedly hostile to the French; they considered Ventura to be French because he had fought under Napoleon. As a result of their political intrigues, Ventura was dismissed. Serving the King of Punjab He traveled east, ending up in Lahore alongside Jean-François Allard in 1822. They took service with Maharaja Ranjit Singh, King of Punjab, as the Maharaja was encouraging veterans from erstwhile Napoleon's army in his ongoing bid to modernize his Sikh Khalsa Army in European warfare.