A few minutes east of the Jokhang, in the small Muslim quarter known as Wapaling, stands the Lhasa Great Mosque — a green-domed building serving the city's community of Tibetan Muslims, the Khache. These are descendants of Kashmiri and Ladakhi traders who began settling in Lhasa from the 17th century onwards under the patronage of the fifth Dalai Lama, who granted them the land for a mosque and a graveyard.
The current building dates from a 1959 reconstruction after the original was burned in the unrest of that year, with extensive remodeling since. The neighbourhood around it — narrow lanes of two-storey mud-brick houses, halal restaurants, butcher shops — is one of the more atmospheric pockets of the old town and an interesting counterpoint to the Buddhist Lhasa most visitors see. Non-Muslims may not enter the prayer hall but the surrounding lanes are freely walkable.