such was his beauty that Akbar Khan seems to have become something of a sex symbol in 1830s Kabul. Maulana Hamid Kashmiri, the author of the Akbarnama, the first epic poem written in his honour, gives over several pages to his wedding-night athletics with his lovely bride, the daughter of Mohammad Shah Ghilzai, “this houri of paradise, as bright as the sun, who put the moon and stars to shame.”
