Gasherbrum
mountain range
Gasherbrum (Urdu: گاشر برم) is a remote group of peaks situated at the northeastern end of the Baltoro Glacier in the Karakoram mountain range. The peaks are located within the border region of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan and Xinjiang, China. The massif contains three of the world's 8,000 metre peaks (if Broad Peak is included).
The highly visible face of Gasherbrum IV has gained the nickname the "Shining Wall" and this has often been claimed as the meaning of the word "Gasherbrum".
However the name Gasherbrum comes from "rgasha" (beautiful) + "brum" (mountain) in Balti, hence it actually means "beautiful mountain".
Geography
The Gasherbrum range forms the continental divide of southern Asia; drainage to the north and east flows into the Tarim Basin, drainage to the south and west flows into the Arabian Sea.
History
In 1856, Thomas George Montgomerie, a British Royal Engineers lieutenant and a member of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India, sighted a group of high peaks in the Karakoram from atop Mount Haramukh, more than 200 km away. He named five of these peaks K1, K2, K3, K4 and K5, where the "K" denotes Karakoram. Today, K1 is known as Masherbrum, K3 as Gasherbrum IV, K4 as Gasherbrum II and K5 as Gasherbrum I. Only K2, the second highest mountain in the world, has retained Montgomerie's name. Broad Peak was thought to miss out on a K-number as it was hidden from Montgomerie's view by Masherbrum.
The public source identifies “Gasherbrum” as mountain range. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gasherbrum, mountain and range.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Gasherbrum”, the useful work is to connect “mountain range” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q862078. VIAF identifies the subject as 241898755. Authority coordinates are 35.717, 76.700. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1856.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gasherbrum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.