Lhasa

Lhasa's return to power began in the 15th century, when Je Tsongkhapa and his disciples founded the three great Gelug monasteries of Ganden, Sera and Drepung near the city. Their order grew so strong that in 1642 the Fifth Dalai Lama, backed by Güshi Khan of the Khoshut Mongols, made Lhasa the seat of his government, and for the first time since the empire it was the political as well as the holy capital of Tibet. In 1645 work began on the Potala on the Red Hill; its White Palace was finished three years later, and the Red Palace rose above it in the 1690s.

In 1716 a visiting Jesuit found the Barkhor crowded with Mongol, Chinese, Armenian, Kashmiri and Nepalese traders, who bought Tibetan musk and gold and sold tea, sugar and turquoise. The next year the Dzungars seized the city. A Qīng army drove them out in 1720, and from then on the emperors kept resident commissioners, the Ambans, in Lhasa. When the Ambans murdered the regent in 1750, the city rose and killed them; in 1751 the Qiánlóng emperor reorganised the government around a council, the Kashag, which would rule Tibet from Lhasa.