Rouran epochGöktürk epochUyghur epochKirghiz epoch
RouranFirst GöktürkTang ruleSecond GöktürkUyghurKirghizHunsWestern GöktürkTürgeshKarlukKhazar
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  • 900

For two centuries the Tibetan empire was the third great power of inner Asia, beside China and the steppe. It rose on the plateau at the same time as the Tang in China and the Second Göktürk Khaganate on the Orkhon. It outlasted both.

The rise

The Yarlung kings united the plateau in the early seventh century. Under Songtsen Gampo the new state reached the Tang frontier. It also took a Chinese princess in marriage. Within a generation Tibetan armies were in the Tarim. In 670 they took the Four Garrisons. For the rest of the century the oases changed hands repeatedly between Lhasa and Chang’an.

The war with Tibet explains why the Tang had armies in the west at all in the years when the Göktürk khaganate was restoring itself on the Orkhon. An empire fighting on the plateau and in the Tarim had less to spend in Mongolia. This gave the khaganate room to rise.

The Göktürks and Tibet

The Kül Tegin inscription names the Tibetans twice, both times as one of the peoples of the world. They sent mourners to the funeral of the founders, along with the Chinese, the Avars, the Romans and the Kirghiz. When Kül Tegin himself was buried in 732, the Tibetans sent a minister.[1] A state that sends a minister to a funeral on the Orkhon is conducting foreign policy, not paying a courtesy.[1]

It has been argued that Bilge Khan had quietly allied himself with the Tibetan court after he took power in 716.[2] In 725, at a banquet in his tent, he spoke to the Tang envoy Yuan Zhen about Tibet.[3] The Tibetans, he said, were a breed of dogs, and yet the Tang had given them a bride.[3] The Xi and the Khitan, once the slaves of the Göktürks, had Tang brides too.[3] Bilge asked why he alone was refused.[3]

The clearest exchange between the two was a plan that was never carried out. In 727 the Tibetan court wrote to Bilge Khan. It proposed that the two powers invade China together at the same moment.[3] Bilge did not answer the letter. He sent it to Chang’an.[3] The Tang emperor rewarded this with a market on the frontier at the western city of Shouxiang and several hundred thousand bolts of silk a year.[3][4]

The khaganate had recognised what the letter was worth to China. An alliance against China could be sold to China.[3]

The high point

Tibet reached furthest after the empires around it broke. The An Lushan rebellion pulled the Tang armies back to the capitals after 755, and the western garrisons were abandoned. Tibet took the Gansu corridor and the Tarim. In 763 a Tibetan army entered Chang’an itself. It held the city for a fortnight. Tibetan and Abbasid power now met in the upper Oxus. The Uyghur Khaganate on the Orkhon fought Tibet for the oases of the east.

By the end of the eighth century, according to some scholars, the Tibetans held Turfan and dominated the whole southern part of Chinese Turkestan.[5] In the ninth to the eleventh centuries they were pushed out of these conquests. The main cause was a new phase of nomad ascendancy under the Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples. From the open steppe, the nomads could dominate the oases better than the Tibetans could from their highlands.[6]

The peace of 821 fixed the frontier between Tibet and the Tang. It was recorded on a pillar that still stands in Lhasa. Twenty years later the empire came apart in a succession quarrel. This happened in the same decade in which the Kirghiz destroyed the Uyghurs. The two collapses left inner Asia without a great power for the first time in three hundred years.

Tibet and the Tang frontier

Tibet explains the Tang’s behaviour in the west. Every account of the Göktürk, Türgesh and Uyghur relations with China meets a Chinese state whose attention was divided. The other half of that attention went to the plateau. The Tarim garrisons, the wars over Kucha, the Tang’s willingness to buy steppe allies with silk and titles, and the sudden abandonment of everything west of the Pamirs after 755 all belong to a single frontier problem. Tibet is the constant in that problem.

Relations with other states

Red is war, blue alliance, gold trade. Where several held at once, the line shows what prevailed; alliance and trade can run side by side. Each line rests on an article. Point at a state to see its weightiest relation, select it to see its events. The slider shows what stood in a given year, and Play runs through the years.

  1. Yenisei Kirghiz Khaganate758 to 840

    • Alliance758 to 840the Tibetans and the Kirghiz leaned on each other

References

  1. ^ a b Kül Tegin inscription
  2. ^ Jagchid 1989, p. 42
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 194
  4. ^ Jagchid 1989, p. 42–43
  5. ^ Lattimore 1951, p. 223
  6. ^ Lattimore 1951, p. 224

Sources

Literature

  • Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
  • Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
  • Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
  • Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
  • Sechin Jagchid; Van Jay Symons, Peace, War, and Trade Along the Great Wall. Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia (1989)
  • Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1951)

Related

What links here6

States
Yenisei Kirghiz Khaganate
Conflicts
Uyghur–Kirghiz War
Battles & Events
Bilge Khan's Tent Banquet (725)
Places
Kucha
Sources
Altai runiform inscriptions · Ulaangom inscription

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “The Tibetan Empire.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/polities/tibetan-empire/

Last revised: 8 November 2026