Labrang Monastery
monastery in Xiahe County, Gansu, China
Labrang Monastery (Tibetan: བླ་བྲང་བཀྲ་ཤིས་འཁྱིལ་, Wylie: bla-brang bkra-shis-'khyil; Chinese: Lābǔléng Sì, 拉卜楞寺) is one of the six great monasteries of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism founded by Je Lama Tsongkhapa. Its formal name is Genden Shédrup Dargyé Trashi Gyésu khyilwé Ling (Tibetan: དགེ་ལྡན་བཤད་སྒྲུབ་དར་རྒྱས་བཀྲ་ཤིས་གྱས་སུ་འཁྱིལ་བའི་གླིང༌།, Wylie: dge ldan bshad sgrub dar rgyas bkra shis gyas su 'khyil ba'i gling).
Labrang is located in Labrang Town of Xiahe (Sangqu) County, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu, in the traditional Tibetan area of Amdo. Labrang Monastery is home to the largest number of monks outside the Tibet Autonomous Region. Xiahe is about four hours by car from the provincial capital Lanzhou.
In the early part of the 20th century, Labrang was by far the largest and most influential monastery in Amdo. It is located on the Daxia River, a tributary of the Yellow River.
History
The monastery was founded in 1709 by the first Jamyang Zhépa, Ngawang Tsöndrü. It is one of Tibetan Buddhism's most important monastery towns outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region.
Labrang Monastery is situated at the strategic intersection of two major Asian cultures—Tibetan and Mongolian — and was one of the largest Buddhist monastic universities.
“Labrang Monastery” enters the record as monastery in Xiahe County, Gansu, China. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Labrang, Monastery and monastery can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Labrang Monastery” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Labrang, Monastery and monastery provides the most credible route into that argument.
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 Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1799533. Authority coordinates are 35.194, 102.505. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1709.
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This entry incorporates text from “Labrang Monastery” 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.