Excerpts from The History of the Criminal Tribes of the Pathans: The Kharbuza

The Kharbuza clan has been smuggling guns across the Khyber since the first day it became profitable to do so, back when the Firangis set up a customs post at the mouth of the Great Pass. Before that, the family business had always been looting and pillaging, but Ghazi Abu Tarbuz al-Kharbuza-ud-din, the farsighted patriarch of the Kharbuza clan, observed the rise of John Company and its armies in the plains, realised that business was about to take a permanent downturn, and decided, with some regret, that the time had come for him and his family to move to a less honourable profession.