of the local economy could sustainably provide, and required subsidies from the central government. Such support became unfeasible by the 1850-60s due to the costs of suppressing the Taiping and other rebellions in the Chinese heartland. The Qing authorities in Xinjiang responded by raising taxes, introducing new ones, and selling official posts to the highest bidders (e.g. that of governor of Yarkand to Rustam Beg of Khotan for 2,000 yambus, and that of Kucha to Sa'id Beg for 1,500 yambus). The new officeholders would then proceed to recoup their investment by fleecing their subject populations. Increasing tax burdens and corruption only added to the discontent amongst the Xinjiang people, who had long suffered both from the maladministration of Qing officials and their local beg subordinates and from the destructive invasions of the khojas. Qing soldiers in Xinjiang, however, were still not paid on time or properly equipped. With the start of the revolt in Gansu and Shaanxi in 1862, rumors spread among the Hui (Dungans) of Xinjiang that the Qing authorities were preparing a wholesale preemptive slaughter of the Hui people in Xinjiang, or in a particular community. Opinions as to the veracity of these rumors vary: while the Tongzhi Emperor described them as "absurd" in his edict of September25, 1864, Muslim historians generally believe that massacres were indeed planned, if not by the imperial government then by various local authorities. Thus it was the Dungans who usually revolted in most Xinjiang towns, although the local Turkic peopleTaranchis, Kyrgyzs, and Kazakhswould usually quickly join the fray. Multi-centric revolt The first spark of revolt in Xinjiang proved small enough for the Qing authorities to easily extinguish it. On March17, 1863, some 200 Dungans from the village of Sandaohe (a few miles west of Suiding), supposedly provoked by a rumor of a preemptive Dungan massacre, attacked Tarchi ( now part of Huocheng County), one of the Nine Forts of the Ili Basin. The rebels seized weapons from the fort's armory and killed the soldiers of its garrison, but were soon defeated by government troops from other forts and were themselves slaughtered. Revolt broke out again the following yearthis time, almost simultaneously in all three Circuits of Xinjiangon a scale that made its suppression beyond the capability of the authorities. On the night of June3–4, 1864, the Dungans of Kucha, one of the cities south of Tianshan, rose up and were soon joined