Tibetan Empire

The Tibetan Empire was the imperial state with which, in the words of the cited article, Tibetan history begins, and it lasted from 632 to 842. Its first emperor, Songtsen Gampo, made Lhasa the capital of Tibet in the seventh century, and during his reign the Tibetan laws, calendar, alphabet and system of weights and measures were created. Tibetan literature attributes the formal introduction of Buddhism to his reign. Tibetan armies conquered and controlled large sections of Central Asia to the northwest and northern China and Mongolia to the northeast, and the Tibetan Yarlung dynasty conquered the Chinese Tang dynasty for most of the eighth century. After the murder of the last king of the Yarlung dynasty the empire gave way to decentralization and many smaller states, while Buddhism, first introduced during the empire period, became a central feature of Tibetan ethnicity.