Place · Namgyal citadel & Maitreya temples · India
Basgo
Also known as Basgo, Bazgo, Namgyal, Chamba Lhakhang
The Namgyal dynasty's citadel above the Indus, of mud brick on a crumbling ridge, with three Maitreya temples inside it holding sixteenth and seventeenth-century wall painting and a colossal seated Maitreya. It withstood a three-year Mongol and Tibetan siege in the 1680s.
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 34.218, 77.270
Worth knowing
The siege ended when Ladakh appealed to the Mughal governor of Kashmir, and the price of that help was a mosque in Leh and the conversion of the king in name — which is how Ladakh's political settlement with the plains was made. The mud-brick fort has been eroding for three centuries and was on the World Monuments watch list.
Connections (1)
- CampaignHemis Monastery, Ladakh
Basgo held a three-year Mongol and Tibetan siege in the 1680s, and the Namgyals bought their relief from the Mughal governor of Kashmir at the price of a mosque in Leh and a nominal conversion. Hemis, founded under the same dynasty, became the richest Drukpa monastery in Ladakh out of the settlement that followed. The kingdom's religious map is the shape of that one war.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Basgo”. World Monuments Fund conservation reports on the Basgo Maitreya temples; Luciano Petech, The Kingdom of Ladakh c. 950–1842 (1977).
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