Tibetan Empire

The Tibetan Empire was a major Inner Asian power that emerged when Songtsen Gampo, the thirty-third ruler of the Yarlung dynasty, ascended the throne around 618 CE following the assassination of his father, Namri Songtsen.

From a relatively small polity in the Yarlung Valley, Songtsen Gampo unified the warring clans of the Tibetan Plateau through a combination of conquest, marriage alliances, and diplomacy, moving his capital to the Kyichu Valley at the site of the future city of Lhasa. He is credited with foundational state-building reforms, including the codification of laws, the introduction of a Tibetan writing system devised by his minister Thonmi Sambhota, and the initial patronage of Buddhism, reinforced by his marriages to the Nepali princess Bhrikuti and the Tang Chinese princess Wencheng. His incorporation of the Zhangzhung kingdom of western Tibet around 645 secured control over most of the plateau. Under later emperors such as Trisong Detsen and Ralpacan, the empire reached its zenith in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, controlling vast territories from the Tarim Basin and the Pamirs to Bengal and the borders of Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan, and even briefly capturing the Tang capital of Chang'an in 763. The empire rivalled Tang China and the Abbasid Caliphate as a dominant force in Central Asia. It fragmented after the assassination of King Langdarma in 842, ushering in the Era of Fragmentation and ending centralised Tibetan imperial rule.