Gyurme Namgyal

Gyurme Namgyal (Wylie: Gyur med rnam rgyal) (died 11 November 1750) was a ruling prince of Tibet of the Pholha family. He was the son and successor of Polhané Sönam Topgyé and ruled from 1747 to 1750 during the period of Qing rule of Tibet. Gyurme Namgyal was murdered by the Manchu Ambans Fucin and Labdon in 1750. He was the last dynastic ruler of Tibet. After his death, in 1751, the Tibetan Ganden Phodrang government was taken over by the 7th Dalai Lama, Kelzang Gyatso. Thus began a new administrative order that would last for the next 150 years.

Gyurme Namgyal, also known as Dalai Batur, was the second son of the Tibetan ruling prince (miwang) Pholhané Sönam Topgyé who ruled from 1728 to 1747. The natural heir to the title was actually his eldest son Gyurme Yeshe Tseten, who had been given jurisdiction over Ngari (West Tibet) in 1729. Gyurme Yeshe Tseten had gathered good experience during the civil war in 1727-1728, and had administrative experience through his governance in Ngari. However, his health deteriorated in the 1740s so that Pholhané excluded him from the succession. Moreover, his father did not approve of his view of life. Although he was married to two wives and sired several children, he mostly wore the garb of a lama and had very close relations with Buddhist clerics. His junior brother Gyurme Namgyal, on the other side, was the commander of the Tibetan army, kept a cavalry unit of several thousand Mongols, and had the outer appearance of a nobleman used to rule. He was apparently preferred by Pholhané on these grounds. After Pholhané had decided for Gyurme Namgyal, the imperial Qing court ratified the choice on 28 January 1746.

When Pholhané died on 12 March 1747, Gyurme Namgyal succeeded without any commotion. The new ruler took over the governing staff of his father. In particular, Gashi Pandita Gonpo Ngodrub Rabten, a nephew of the political strongman Khangchenné (d. 1727), cooperated with him. Like his father, he had little regard for the Dalai Lama, and is usually depicted as a brutish figure in Tibetan historiography. Gyurme Namgyal's tenure of power was marked by his attempts to eliminate his brother Gyurme Yeshe Tseten who governed in Ngari. In 1748 he conceived a plan to dispatch an army for West Tibet and arrest the brother. This plan was abandoned, since it met with fierce opposition from his ministers. In this connection, he accused his brother before the Qianlong Emperor to suppress monasteries in Ngari, rob traders, and cut off trading routes with Central Tibet. As the imperial court did not react swiftly to these accusations, he sent a memorandum where he accused his brother of having captured a border town in Tsang with 700 men.

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