[5] William Fraser, who accompanied Elphinstone to meet Shah Shujah was "struck with the dignity of his appearance and the romantic Oriental awe.

"[6] Fraser also judged him to be "about five feet six inches (168 cm) tall" and his skin colour was "very fair, but dead...his beard was thick jet black and shortened a little by the obliquely upwards, but turned again at the corners ...

During his time in India, Shujah was imprisoned and forced to give up the Timur Ruby, Koh-i-Noor, and the sister diamond Dray-i-Nur to Ranjit Singh .

[12] During his time in exile, Shujah indulged his cruelty by removing the noses, ears, tongues, penises, and testicles of his courtiers and slaves when they displeased him in the slightest.

[13] When the American adventurer Dr. Josiah Harlan visited Shujah's court in exile, he noted that all of Shujah's courtiers and slaves were missing some part of their bodies as all had in some way displeased their master at some point along the line — and yet they were all slavishly devoted to him — as Harlan noted that there was an "earless assemblage of mutes and eunuchs in the ex-king's service".

[13] Shujah's grand vizier, Mullah Shakur, had grown his hair long to cover up that both his ears had been chopped off, and he spoke in the distinctive high-pitched voice of a eunuch; Harlan noted he was lucky as the rest of his body was still intact.

[13] Harlan commented on "the grace and dignity of His Highness's demeanor", observing the sense of power he projected, but also that "years of disappointment had created in the countenance of the ex-King an appearance of melancholy and resignation.

"[14] Harlan, a man without much military experience and knowledge of Pashto, offered to lead an invasion of Afghanistan to restore Shujah, an offer that led the former monarch to break "into a poetical effusion in praise of Kabul" and its gardens, its trees laden with fruits, and its music, culminating with "Kabul is called the Crown of the Air.

[16] Harlan ultimately grew disillusioned with Shujah, writing that he did not view him as the "legitimate monarch, the victim of treasonable practices", but rather as "a wayward tyrant, inflexible in moods, vindictive in his enmities, faithless in his attachments, unnatural in his affections.

In a concerted campaign, the following year, Shujah marched on Kandahar, while the Sikhs commanded by General Hari Singh Nalwa, attacked Peshawar.

He generally shut himself away in Bala Hissar,[citation needed] the citadel of Kabul, and spent his time exacting bloody vengeance on those Afghans whom he felt had betrayed him, making him extremely unpopular with his people.