Amdo

Amdo (Tibetan: ཨ་མདོ་, Wylie: a mdo [ʔam˥˥.to˥˥]; Chinese: 安多; pinyin: Ānduō) is one of the three traditional Tibetan regions, the others being Ü-Tsang (Central Tibet) in the west and Dotoe also known as Kham in the east. Ngari (including former Guge kingdom) in the north-west was incorporated into Ü-Tsang. The formal name of this Tibetan region/province is Domey (Tibetan: མདོ་སྨད་) in literatures.^[1] Historically, Amdo and Kham together were also called Do Kham on maps and manuscripts.^[2] Amdo encompasses a large area from the Machu (Yellow River) to the Drichu (Yangtze).^{[note 1]} Amdo is mostly coterminous with China's present-day Qinghai province, but also includes small portions of Sichuan and Gansu provinces.

Amdo was a part of the Tibetan Empire until the 9th century and was ruled by a local Tibetan theocracy called Tsongkha from the 10th century to the 12th century. In the 13th century Mongol forces started participating in the ruling of the Amdo area. A patron and priest relationship began in 1253 when a Tibetan priest, Phagspa, visited Kublai Khan. Phagspa was made Kublai's spiritual guide and later appointed by him to the rank of priest king of Tibet and constituted ruler of (1) Tibet Proper, comprising the thirteen states of Ü-Tsang; (2) Kham; and (3) Amdo.^[3] From the 14th century to the 16th century, the Great Ming controlled some areas within today's Xining, Xunhua and Hualong. The Emperor Shizong of Qing seized control of Amdo in the 1720s after wars with Khoshut leader Lobdzan Dandzin (Tibetan: བློ་བཟང་བསྟན་འཛིན; Mongolian: Лувсанданзан).

Historically, culturally, and ethnically a part of Tibet, Amdo was from the mid-18th century and after administered by a series of local Tibetan rulers who were associated with the government located in Ü-Tsang through monastery systems, and Dalai Lama's Ganden Podrang had not directly governed the area since that time.^[4] Local Tibetan rulers were also often in some kind of alliance with or under the titular authority of a larger, more powerful non-Tibetan regime by such as Mongols and Qing.^[5]

From 1917 to 1928, parts of Amdo were occupied intermittently by the Hui Muslim warlords of the Ma Family. In 1928, the autonomous Ma Family joined the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party. By 1952, Chinese Communist Party forces had defeated both the Kuomintang and the Tibetan forces and annexed the region, solidifying their hold on the area roughly by 1958. Tibetan guerrilla forces in Amdo emerged in 1956 and continued operating through the 1959 Tibetan uprising until 1962, fighting the People's Liberation Army and harsh Chinese land reform policies.

Amdo is the home of many important Tibetan Buddhism spiritual leaders, lamas, monks, nuns, and scholars, including the 14th Dalai Lama, the 10th Panchen Lama Choekyi Gyaltsen, and the great Gelug school reformer Je Tsongkhapa.

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