Ü-Tsang

Ü-Tsang is the cultural heartland of Tibet, uniting Ü around Lhasa and the Yarlung valley with Tsang around Shigatse and Gyantse. The Yarlung kings ruled these valleys from about 127 BCE and built the Tibetan Empire of the seventh to ninth centuries, whose court made Buddhism the faith of the land.

After the empire's collapse the region fragmented, and from the thirteenth century the Sakya lamas governed it as clients of the Yuan emperors. Sakya power was fading in 1337, and in 1354 the Phagmodrupa dynasty seized the region, followed in Tsang by the Rinpungpa and Tsangpa.

The Mongol Güshi Khan defeated the Tsang king and in 1642 made the fifth Dalai Lama head of the Ganden Phodrang government, which raised the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Qing armies entered in 1720, beginning nearly two centuries of imperial supervision over the Dalai Lama's government.