Koh-i-Noor
The is one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, weighing. It is currently set in the Crown of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. The diamond originated in the Kollur mine in present day Andhra Pradesh, India. According to the colonial administrator Theo Metcalfe, there is "very meagre and imperfect" evidence of the early history of the Koh-i-Noor before the 1740s. There is no record of its original weight, but the earliest attested weight is 186 old carats. The first verifiable record of the diamond comes from a history by Muhammad Kazim Marvi of the 1740s invasion of Northern India by Afsharid Iran under Nader Shah. Marvi notes the Koh-i-Noor as one of many stones on the Mughal Peacock Throne that Nader looted from Delhi.
The diamond then changed hands between various empires in south and west Asia, until being given to Queen Victoria after the Second Anglo-Sikh War and the British East India Company's annexation of the Punjab in 1849, during the reign of the then 11-year-old Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, Duleep Singh. The young king ruled under the shadow of the Company ally Gulab Singh, the first Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, who had previously possessed the stone.
In 1851, it went on display at the Great Exhibition in London, but the lackluster cut failed to impress viewers. Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, ordered it to be re-cut as an oval brilliant by Coster Diamonds. By modern standards, the culet is unusually broad, giving the impression of a black hole when the stone is viewed head-on; it is nevertheless regarded by gemologists as "full of life".
Since arriving in the UK, it has only been worn by female members of the British royal family. It is said to bring bad luck if it is worn by a man. Victoria wore the stone in a brooch and a circlet. After she died in 1901, it was set in the Crown of Queen Alexandra. It was transferred to the Crown of Queen Mary in 1911, and to the Crown of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in 1937 for her coronation.
Today, the diamond is on public display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. The governments of India, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan have all claimed ownership of the Koh-i-Noor, demanding its return ever since India gained independence from the British Empire in 1947. The British government insists the gem was obtained legally under the terms of the Last Treaty of Lahore in 1849 and has rejected the claims.
In 2018, at a hearing of the Supreme Court of India, the Archeological Survey of India clarified that the diamond was surrendered to the British and "was neither stolen nor forcibly taken away".
History
Legendary origin
According to the diary of Alauddin Khalji of the Khalji dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate, he acquired a large diamond when he invaded the kingdoms of southern India at the beginning of the 14th century and looted it from the Kakatiya dynasty.It later passed on to succeeding dynasties of the sultanate, and Babur, the Turco-Mongol founder of the Mughal Empire, received the diamond in 1526 as a tribute for his conquest of Delhi and Agra at the Battle of Panipat. However, it is impossible to verify the details exactly about when or where it was found, and many competing theories exist as to its original owner. Babur wrote about a "famous" diamond that weighed just over 187 old carats – approximately the size of the once 186-carat Koh-i-Noor.
For some time it was alleged that while in the possession of Shah Jahan's son Aurangzeb, the stone was cut by Hortense Borgia, a Venetian lapidarist, who reduced the weight of the large stone to. For this carelessness, Borgia was reprimanded and fined 10,000 rupees. However according to recent research, the story of Borgia cutting the diamond is not correct, and most probably mixed up with that of the Orlov, part of Catherine the Great's imperial Russian scepter in the Kremlin.
Early history
In early Indian history, diamonds were the most valued of gemstones. However, during the period of Mughal rule, diamonds lost this distinction. When looking at the Mughal treasury, Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, the Grand vizier to Akbar, noted that red spinels and Burmese rubies had become the most desirable jewels by the nobility. During this time the Persian new year ceremony, Nowruz, had become a period in which the subjects could bring offerings of gems and money to the imperial family in exchange for political promotions within the greater bureaucracy. By the time Shah Jahan ascended the throne as the fifth Mughal emperor, there were so many jewels in the treasury that he decided to use many of them in the making of the ornate Peacock Throne in 1635.Over a century later in 1738 Nader Shah founded the Afsharid dynasty. Following the overthrow of the Safavid dynasty of Persia two years earlier, he began raiding Mughal territory before soon launching a full-scale invasion of North-West India. This invading force soon captured Delhi where, after a massacre of the civilian population, the army began a systematic looting of the wealth of the city and the treasury of the Mughal Empire. With nearly 10,000 wagons of loot, along with millions of rupees and an assortment of other historic jewels, Nader Shah also carried away the imperial Peacock Throne. Nader Shah's biographer, Muhammad Kazim Marvi, first recorded seeing the Koh-i-Noor in the 1740s on the head of one of the peacocks on the throne, along with other prominent gems such as the great Timur Ruby and the Daria-i-Noor. It is alleged that Nader Shah exclaimed "Koh-i-Noor!", Persian and Urdu for "Mountain of Light", when he first obtained the famous stone. One of his consorts is even noted to have said, "If a strong man were to throw four stones – one north, one south, one east, one west, and a fifth stone up into the air – and if the space between them were to be filled with gold, all would not equal the value of the Koh-i-Noor".
After Nadir Shah was killed and his empire collapsed in 1747, the Koh-i-Noor fell to his grandson, who in 1751 gave it to Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the Afghan Empire, in return for his support. One of Ahmed's grandsons, Shah Shuja Durrani, wore a bracelet containing the Koh-i-Noor on the occasion of Mountstuart Elphinstone's visit to Peshawar in 1808. A year later, Shah Shuja formed an alliance with the United Kingdom to help defend against a possible invasion of Afghanistan by Russia. He was quickly overthrown, but fled with the diamond to Lahore, where in one account, Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh Empire, in return for his hospitality, insisted upon the gem being given to him, and he took possession of it in 1813.
Shah Shuja's memoirs dispute this, and claim Ranjit Singh extorted the diamond from him by having his son tortured in front of him.
In Maharaja Ranjit Singh's possession
had the diamond examined by jewelers of Lahore for two days to ensure that Shuja had not tricked him. After the jewelers confirmed its genuineness, he donated 125,000 rupees to Shuja. Ranjit Singh then asked the principal jewelers of Amritsar to estimate the diamond's value; the jewelers declared that the value of the diamond was "far beyond all computation". Ranjit Singh then affixed the diamond to the front of his turban, and paraded on an elephant to enable his subjects to see it. He used to wear it as an armlet during major festivals such as Diwali and Dusserah, and took it with him during travel. He would exhibit it to prominent visitors, especially British officers.One day, Ranjit Singh asked the diamond's former owners – Shuja and his wife Wafa Begum – to estimate its value. Wafa Begum replied that if a strong man threw a stone in four cardinal directions and vertically, Koh-i-Noor would be worth more than the gold and precious stones filled in the space. Ranjit Singh grew paranoid about the Koh-i-Noor being stolen, because in the past, another valuable jewel had been stolen from him while he was intoxicated. He kept the diamond within a high-security facility at the Gobindgarh Fort when it was not in use. When the diamond was to be transported, it was placed in a pannier on a guarded camel; 39 other camels with identical panniers were included in the convoy; the diamond was always placed on the first camel immediately behind the guards, but great secrecy was maintained regarding which camel carried it. Only Ranjit Singh's treasurer Misr Beli Ram knew which camel carried the diamond.
In June 1839, Ranjit Singh suffered his third stroke, and it became apparent that he would die soon. On his deathbed, he started giving away his valuable possessions to religious charities, and appointed his eldest son Kharak Singh as his successor. A day before his death, on 26 June 1839, a major argument broke out between his courtiers regarding the fate of Koh-i-Noor. Ranjit Singh himself was too weak to speak, and communicated using gestures. Bhai Gobind Ram, the head Brahmin of Ranjit Singh, insisted that the king had willed Koh-i-Noor and other jewels to the Jagannath Temple, Puri: the king apparently supported this claim through gestures, as recorded in his court chronicle Umdat ul-Tawarikh. However, treasurer Beli Ram insisted that it was a state property rather than Ranjit Singh's personal property, and therefore, should be handed over to Kharak Singh.
After Ranjit Singh's death, Beli Ram refused to send the diamond to the temple, and hid it in his vaults. Meanwhile, Kharak Singh and wazir Dhian Singh also issued orders stating that the diamond should not be taken out of Lahore.