Lhasa > La-sa Xizang Zizhiqu (Tibet) China

Songtsän Gampo becomes the first emperor of the Tibetan Empire after his father Namri Songtsen is poisoned.

Tibet's power expands beyond Lhasa (Tibetan Plateau) and the Yarlung Valley during his reign.

Songtsän Gampo builds the first palace on the site of the Potala Palace in Lhasa.

A basket of Buddhist scriptures had arrived in Tibet from India in the fifth century during the reign of Thothori Nyantsen, the twenty-eighth king of Tibet according to the Tibetan legendary tradition.

Written in Sanskrit, they are not translated into Tibetan until the reign of king Songtsän Gampo.

While there is doubt about the level of Songtsän Gampo's interest in Buddhism, it is known that he married a Chinese Tang Dynasty Buddhist princess, Wencheng, who had come to Tibet with a statue of Shakyamuni Buddha.

It is clear from Tibetan sources however that some of his successors became ardent Buddhists.

The records show that Chinese Buddhists are actively involved in missionary activity in Tibet, they do not have the same level of imperial support as Indian Buddhists, with tantric lineages from Bihar and Bengal.

Songtsän Gampo according to a Tibetan legendary tradition also married a Nepalese Buddhist princess, Bhrikuti.

He will already be regarded by the second half of the eighth century as an embodiment of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara.

Emperor Taizong of Tang had meanwhile sent the general Li Jing against Tuyuhun in late 634  and, in a major campaign, had overpowered Tuyuhun's Busabo Khan Murong Fuyun, who was killed in flight.

Tang thereafter appointed Murong Fuyun's son Murong Shun as Tuyuhun's khan and, after Murong Shun was assassinated late in 635, supported Murong Shun's son Murong Nuohebo as khan.

Feng Dexia appeared to have gotten to Tibet around the same time.

By this time, Songtsän Gampo is aware that, in the past, the khans of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate and Tuyuhun had arranged marriages of state with China and therefore sends an emissary to accompany Feng back to Tang with further tribute to request to marry a Tang princess.

Emperor Taizong had received the emissary with elaborate courtesy; he reciprocates four years later by dispatching a group of high officials to visit the Tibetan monarch.

When the Tibetan emissary returns to Tibet, he informs Songtsän Gampo, falsely according to Tibetan historical sources, that Taizong was disposed to approve a dynastic marriage but changed his mind after hearing the Tibetans slandered by the Tuyuhun.

It was said that Murong Nuohebo had visited Tang and was interfering, leading to Taizong's refusal.

Songtsän Gampo, believing the report, attacks Tuyuhun in late 637 and early 638, capturing some of them and forcing the rest to flee north of Qinghai Lake.

The Tang Empire, aided by Muslims in the west and the Bai kingdom of Nanzhao in the south, has fought intermittently with the Tibetan Empire for control of areas in Inner and Central Asia, which has at times been settled with marriage alliances.

There had been a long string of conflicts with Tibet over territories in the Tarim Basin between 670–692, and in 763, the Tibetans had even captured Chang'an for fifteen days amid the An Shi Rebellion.

Hostilities continue until 821, when a formal peace treaty is finally signed between the Tang Dynasty and the Tibetan Empire.

A bilingual inscription on a stone pillar outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa records the terms of this treaty, including the borders between the two countries.

...Tibet, approximating the extent of modern China.

The Dzungar, despite the defeat at Jao Modo, are again embroiled in war with the Qing twenty years later.

In 1718 Galdan's nephew and heir, Tsewang Rabdan, invades Tibet to settle a prolonged dispute over the successor to the Dalai Lama.

His troops seize Lhasa, imprison the Dalai Lama, and ambush a Manchu relief force.

Kangxi retaliates in 1720; two Chinese armies defeats the Dzungar and drives them from Tibet.

This is the first war in which Mongol forces make extensive use of musketry; they are not very effective, however, against the larger, better-armed and better-equipped Qing forces.

After the death of the Dalai Lama, a new Dalai Lama is installed by Kangxi, and a Manchu garrison us left in Lhasa.

Meanwhile, another Chinese army invades Dzungar territory to capture Urümqi and Turpan.

Additional Chinese punitive expeditions eventually defeat the Dzungar in 1732 and virtually end Mongolian independence for nearly two centuries.

Gushri Khan, Mongol leader of the Khoshut tribe, which had displaced the Mongol Tümed dynasty in Kokonor (modern Qinghai province in China), had enthroned the Fifth Dalai Lama in 1642 as ruler of Tibet, appointing Bsod-nams chos-'phel, the third hierarch of the Dge-lugs-pa sect, as minister for administrative affairs and himself taking the title of king and the role of military protector.

These three forceful personalities have methodically and efficiently consolidated the religious and temporal authority of the Dge-lugs-pa. Lhasa, long the spiritual heart of Tibet, has become the political capital as well.

Dge-lugs-pa supremacy has been imposed on all other orders, with special severity toward the Karma-pa, and a reorganized district administration has reduced the power of the lay nobility.

The grandeur and prestige of the regime have been enhanced by reviving ceremonies attributed to the religious kings, by enlarging the nearby monasteries of 'Bras-spungs, Sera, and Dga'-Idan, and by building the superb Potala palace, completed by another great figure, Sangs-rgyas rgya-mtsho, who in 1679 had succeeded as minister regent just before the death of the Fifth Dalai Lama, his patron.

By this time, a soundly based and unified government had been established over a wider extent than any for the past eight centuries.

The installations of the Fifth Dalai Lama at Lhasa and the Qing, or Manchu, dynasty in China two years later had been almost synchronous.

Good relations with Tibet are important to the Manchu because of the Dalai Lama's prestige among the Mongols, from whom a new threat is taking shape in the ambitions of the powerful Oirat of western Mongolia.

The Dzungar, the collective identity of several Oirat (West Mongolian) tribes that have formed and maintained what is to be the last Central Asian nomadic empire, continue to threaten China, having invaded Tibet in 1717.

They had taken Lhasa with an army six thousand strong in response to the deposition of the Dalai Lama and his replacement in 1706 with Lha-bzan Khan.

They had removed Lha-bzan from power and held the city for two years, in 1718 destroying a Chinese army.

Lhasa is not retaken by the Qing armies until 1720.

There are continued Mongol interventions in Tibet throughout the period of Qing rule of Tibet and a reciprocal spread of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia.

The Lhasa riot of 1750 takes place in the Tibetan capital Lhasa, and lasts several days.

The uprising begins on November 11, 1750 after the expected new regent of Tibet, Gyurme Namgyal, is assassinated by two Manchu ambans.

During the uprising against Chinese authority both ambans are murdered by the mob, and fifty-one Qing soldiers and seventy-seven Chinese citizens are killed.

The Qianlong Emperor sends armies into Tibet after the Lhasa riot of 1750 and firmly establishes the Dalai Lama as the ruler of Tibet, with a Qing resident and garrison to preserve Qing presence.

The leader of the rebellion, Lobsang Trashi, and fourteen other rebels are executed.

Further afield, military campaigns against Nepalese and Gurkhas force these peoples to submit and send tribute.