with his small, but comparatively well trained and disciplined army consisting of local dungans and kashgarian turkic people (uighurs, in modern terms), their kyrgyz allies, yaqub's own kokandians, as well as some 200 soldiers sent by the ruler of badakhshan, yaqub beg was able not only to take the manchu fortress and the han chinese town of kashgar during 1865 (the manchu commander in kashgar, as usual, blowing himself up), but to defeat a much larger force sent by the rashidin of kucha, who sought domination of the tarim basin region for himself.