Amdo (Tibetan: ཨ༌མདོ; Chinese: 安多; pinyin: Ānduō) is one of the three traditional regions of Tibet, the other two being Ü-Tsang and Kham; it is also the birth place of the 14th Dalai Lama. Amdo encompasses a large area from the Machu River (Yellow River) to the Drichu river (Yangtze River). While culturally and ethnically a Tibetan area, Amdo has been administered by a series of local rulers in recent centuries. The Dalai Lamas have not ruled over Amdo since the mid-18th century In 1928, the region of Amdo became part of the Qinghai province of the Republic of China.
The identically-named, sparsely-populated Amdo County in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is not part of the Amdo cultural province. It was directly administered by the Dalai Lama from Lhasa and is today a part of the Changthang region administered by Nagqu in the northern part of the TAR.
Amdo was and is the home of many important Tibetan Buddhist monks (or lamas), scholars who had a major influence on both politics and religious development of Tibet like the 14th Dalai Lama, the 10th Panchen Lama, and the great reformer Je Tsongkhapa.