around Urumqi. Overall military command of all three circuits fell to the General of Ili, stationed in Huiyuan Cheng. He was also in charge of the civilian administration (directly in the North-of-Tianshan Circuit, and via local Muslim (Uyghur) begs in the South Circuit). However, the Eastern Circuit was subordinated in matters of civilian administration to Gansu Province. In 1765 the Ush rebellion occurred in Ush Turfan. The rebellion was the result of severe misrule and exploitation by the Qing in the early years after the occupation of Xinjiang in 1759. After the conquest local Uyghur officials appointed by the Qing including ‘Abd Allah, the Hakim Beg of Ush Turfan, used their positions to extort money from the local Uyghur population. One of the Uyghur legends of the seven maidens comes from this rebellion of Uyghur girls resisting rape by Manchus. Manchus are explicitly blamed while Han Chinese are not mention by Uyghurs as the culprit in the legend. There is also another Uyghur legend about the seven maidens from the Qarakhanid wars against Buddhist kingdoms like Qocho that is unrelated to the one about Uyghur girls resisting Manchu rape. As a result, in 1765 when Manchu official Sucheng commandeered 240 men to take official gifts to Peking, the enslaved porters and the townspeople revolted. The Uyghur collaborator ‘Abd Allah, Sucheng, the garrisoned Qing Manchu banner force and other Qing Manchu officials were slaughtered and the rebels took command of the Qing fortress. In response to the revolt, the Qing brought a large force to the city and besieged the rebels in their compound for several months until they surrendered. The Manchu officials then cruelly retaliated against the Uyghur rebels by executing over 2,000 men and exiling some 8,000 women. During the Afaqi Khoja revolts there were multiple incursions by Afaqi khojas from Kokand into Kashgaria, similar to those of Jahangir Khoja in the 1820s and Wali Khan in 1857, meant that the government had increased troop levels in Xinjiang to some 50,000. Both Manchu and Han units were stationed in the province with the latter, mainly recruited in Shaanxi and Gansu, having a heavily Hui (Dungan) component. A large part of the Qing army in Xinjiang was based in the Nine Forts of the Ili Region, but there were also forts with Qing garrisons in most other cities of Xinjiang. Maintaining this army involved much higher costs than the taxation