History of Tibet

Tangut Thwarting of Qarakhanid Plans for Further Expansion After the fall of Khotan, the Qarakhanids could not press further eastward in their campaign to capture the rest of the southern Tarim. Mahmud of Ghazni attacked from the south and war ensued between the two Turkic...

The Situation of the East-West Trade Routes The overland Silk Route from China to the West passed from East to West Turkistan, and on through Sogdia and Iran to Byzantium and Europe. An alternative route passed from West Turkistan through Bactria, the Kabul and Punjabi...

Tibetan Relations with China Tibet and China had first established diplomatic relations in 608 when Emperor Songtsen-gampo’s father, Namri-lontsen (gNam-ri slon-mtshan), had sent the first Tibetan mission to the Chinese court at the time of the Sui Dynasty. Songtsen-gampo, in...

When al-Salit bin-Abdullah al-Hanafi arrived in Tibet, there were already two religious traditions sponsored by the imperial court, so-called “Bon” and Buddhism. The former was the native faith of Tibet, while the latter had been introduced by Tibet’s first emperor,...

The Establishment of the Jurchen Empire The Jurchen were a Tungusic Manchu people whose homeland was in northern Manchuria and the adjacent region of southeastern Siberia across the Amur River. They were for­est dwellers whom the Khitans conscripted for their ritual hunts....

Several postwar writers on the Occult have asserted that Buddhism and the legend of Shambhala played a role in the German-Tibetan official contact during the Nazi era.

Many people, especially idealistic newcomers to Buddhism, would like to believe that Buddhism has been immune to the phenomenon of conversion.

The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE) was the first Arab empire in the Middle East. It was the first Muslim empire to interact with Buddhists in parts of Central Asia and the western regions of the Indian subcontinent.

A detailed survey of the history of Tibet from the 2nd century BCE to the mid-16th century CE.

The early period of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–840 CE) saw the translation of Buddhist texts into not only the languages of East Turkistan, but also into Turkic languages and even some into Arabic, as Islam slowly spread into West Turkistan.