after they learned of the qing authorities' plan to disarm or kill them, the dungan soldiers in yarkand in kashgaria rose up in the early hours of july26, 1864. their first attack on the manchu fort (which was outside of the walled muslim city) failed, but it still cost the lives of 2,000 qing soldiers and their families. in the morning, the dungan soldiers entered the muslim city, where some 7,000 hans were forcibly converted to become muslims or massacred. the dungans being numerically few compared to the local turkic muslims, they picked a somewhat neutral partyone ghulam husayn, a religious man from a kabul noble familyas the puppet "padishah".