The Mysterious Mr Jacob: Diamond Merchant, Magician and Spy

by John Zubrzycki

  In 1898, he had appeared as Mr Emanuel in Nathaniel Newnham-Davis’s Jadoo, An Anglo-Indian Love Story, a novel that combined the incestuous nature of Simla’s Anglo-Indian society and some of its better known characters with copious doses of magic and the occult. Newnham-Davis describes Jacob as a pale-faced, fat, black-eyed little man with a jewelled tiger’s claw round his neck who rides a Burmese pony. Asked about Emanuel, one of the protagonists replies that he is ‘a man who knows more of the mystic rites of India than any other man. He hears things that other men cannot hear—sees things that other men cannot see. The natives believe that he has the power of jadoo, the white Jadoo, the clean Jadoo—that gives the power to see and sometimes the power to save.’5

  In 1900, the British writer Flora Annie Steel published Voices in the Night in which Jacob’s character, Philip Lucanaster, is embroiled in a complex plot involving a courtesan, a corrupt nobleman, the district commissioner’s wife, a particularly valuable emerald and a stolen string of pearls. While Newnham-Davis borrowed from the mystical side of Jacob’s character, Steel highlighted his expertise as a jeweller and gem trader. He is shorn of his Arabian Nights aura and presented as a cunning and conniving Jew. ‘He’s always buying jewels,’ says a policeman of Lucanaster. ‘And even if the thieves don’t take the pearls to him directly, they might try and trade them off to the royal family, and then he is sure to hear of it in the end. He is always having dealings with them.’6

  A much later fictional reincarnation was the gaunt, bald, parchment-coloured Cyrus Hone, who has a curio shop perched high above a ravine in Simla and is an expert in curing sick pearls.7 Hone was the creation of Philip Atkey. Using the pseudonym Barry Perowne, he continued the A.J. Raffles series, first published by E.W. Hornung in the early 1900s. Jacob’s character features in ‘Madame Blavatsky’s Teacups’, an unashamedly plagarized mix of Kipling’s Kim and any number of Conan Doyle stories. While the founder of Theosophism enthrals Simla society with her powers of perception, Raffles steals a bunch of rubies from Hone after thrusting him face down ‘on one of the zenana divans displayed for sale’. Meanwhile, his sidekick discovers proof of Hone’s services as an enemy spy. Raffles makes his escape with the rubies concealed in a hollowed-out bat in his cricket bag.

  As writers milked his real and imagined histories, Jacob was coming to terms with his situation. The Diamond Case had hurt his business and, despite the out-of-court settlement, the Nizam was refusing to pay the 150,000 rupees he owed. Rather than finding sympathy, however, his sanity was being questioned as speculation swirled about why he had settled for such a relatively small sum, particularly as his court costs ran into hundreds of thousands of rupees.

  As subsequent events would show, the agreement had nothing to do with altruism. He was hoping that the Nizam would remember his generosity and deference. For all that had passed between them, for all the enemies he had made, he wanted to go back to the halcyon days when he was ‘jeweller to His Exalted Highness the Nizam of Hyderabad’, enjoying privileges given to no other trader. He wanted to be rich and famous again. It was a naive, ignorant and ultimately costly mistake that Jacob would spend the next twenty years trying to rectify.

  The only positive outcome of the affair was his being finally granted British citizenship. On March 26, 1891, Herbert Fanshawe, Chief Secretary to the Punjab Government, wrote to William Cuningham asking about Jacob’s application to be a naturalized British citizen. Cuningham replied that, as far as the Foreign Department was concerned, there was no longer any reason to withhold the application. He said he would pass the matter on to Dennis Fitzpatrick who had recently been promoted to the position of Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, ‘to take what action upon the case he thinks proper’.8

  There is no record of why Fitzpatrick agreed to grant Jacob citizenship, though he was probably hoping that if he left India he might never return. On May 12, 1892, the Foreign Secretary, Henry Mortimer Durand, personally signed Jacob’s passport. It gave his profession as jeweller and his age as forty-three years. The fee was one rupee. A year later, he travelled to Bombay and boarded a steamer bound for Constantinople.

  With Jacob finally out of the country, officials like William Cuningham who, by now, had spent the best part of four years embroiled in some aspect or the other of his activities, must have believed they could finally close their files on the troublesome diamond dealer. They were wrong.

  On July 12, 1893, Edmund Neel, Assistant Secretary in the Political and Secret Department, India Office, sent a confidential cable to the new Resident at Hyderabad, Trevor Plowden. The Foreign Office had been informed that, while in Turkey, Jacob had discussed with Ottoman officials the possibility of his appointment as an honorary Turkish Consul in Hyderabad.9

  Plowden had never met Jacob but his ghost-like presence still haunted the Residency. He had arrived in Hyderabad in the final weeks of the High Court hearing. He remembered that Jacob had refused to go to the city, fearing for his life, and was aware of the ongoing hostility towards him from the Nizam’s officials. Nevertheless, he could imagine him turning up again in a gilded carriage at the entrance to the Chowmahalla Palace with a pouch full of ‘sparkling vanities’ and being warmly greeted by Mahboob Ali Khan. Old habits died hard in Hyderabad.

  He had been reminded of that fact in November 1892 during an audience with the Nizam when he discreetly asked about Albert Abid. The chamberlain had been banished from the palace during the diamond trial. Cuningham had described him as an ‘evil influence’ who had been ‘fleecing his master most grievously’.10 The Foreign Secretary, Henry Durand, agreed that Plowden should suggest that the Nizam get rid of him, but conceded that even if he went, someone similar would take his place. ‘Given an indolent and careless Chief with immense wealth, such people are sure to swarm around him.’

  But, as Plowden wrote to Durand, Abid’s absence had caused the Nizam ‘great personal inconvenience’, and he wanted him back. His warning that Abid might easily cause further trouble went unheeded. The Nizam assured him that he would give Abid ‘most stringent orders not to mix up in any intrigue and to attend solely to business, and so forth’. Concluded Plowden wearily: ‘His Highness has evidently made up his mind to restore Abid to favour, and all I can do is keep an eye upon him.’

  Plowden’s premonitions proved correct. On June 26, 1893, he reported to Durand that he had heard ‘bad reports’ concerning Abid and had raised them with the Nizam who assured him they were untrue. In September, he sent another cable, this time linking Abid to the theft of jewels, gold coins and other valuables from the Nizam’s palace. ‘Abid’s name has been mixed up with them,’ Plowden reported. ‘I caused inquiries to be made in Secunderabad and Residency Bazaars about his sale of precious stones. The fact that I was taking action came to the Nizam’s knowledge and he spoke to me on the subject yesterday. He assured me in the most earnest way that he had Abid under complete control and never permitted him to interfere in public business, and so forth.’

  Plowden said that while he had accepted the Nizam’s assurances he felt duty-bound to remind him about the role he had played in the Diamond Case. ‘I showed him that Abid had been dealing in precious stones for some time past, and that, in October and January last, he had sold some 7000 rupees’ worth of pearls, emeralds and diamonds.’ Plowden told the Nizam he did not have sufficient evidence to charge Abid with theft, but urged him to remain on guard. ‘The Nizam dreads a fresh scandal,’ he added.11

  In 1895, Abid left Hyderabad bound not for Persia, but Devon. During an earlier visit in 1890, he had bought Dulford House, ‘a staunch mansion of white bricks and narrow windows’ on the outskirts of the village of Broadhembury. Now, he could settle there with his wife, two daughters and two sons, one of whom, Alexander Malcolm Satoor Abid, was named after Jacob. Reverend Edwin Chalk, the local historian, remembered Abid’s peculiar brand of English where he kept referring to his wife as ‘he’ and to his daughter as ‘it’. An avid naturalist, he filled the grounds of Dulfo
rd House with wild cheetal, ducks and other exotic animals imported from India. Chalk recalled marvelling at dwarf bonsai trees hundreds of years old, displayed in glass cabinets in the hall. Abid was also the first person to own a motor car in the village, a Rolls-Royce convertible with leather upholstery, driven by a German chauffeur. When Annie died in 1922, he built an elaborate ‘Eastern-style’ mausoleum next to Dulford House where he went to meditate.12

  As Plowden explored ways to keep Abid at arm’s length from the Nizam, he also had to deal with the prospect that his nemesis might return in the guise of a diplomat. According to a cable to the Foreign Office from Sir Arthur Nicolson, Britain’s ambassador to Turkey, Jacob had broached the idea with Ottoman officials of being appointed as an Honorary Consul. ‘It had been pointed out to certain palace functionaries the advantages which such an appointment would offer if some nominal representative of the Sultan would be named at the Court of a Mussulman Prince.’13 Nicolson wrote that the idea ‘was rather a wild one’ and, in any case, it had to be cleared by the Home Office and the Government of India. To ingratiate himself at the palace, Jacob had offered Sultan Abdul Hamid, Emperor of the Ottoman Empire, ‘some Indian curiosities’. Hamid had declined to accept them as a gift, Nicolson wrote, and purchased them instead for £800.

  Plowden’s fears were laid to rest when he received a cable from the Foreign Department pointing out that the Native States were not allowed to have any external relations and no consuls, honorary or otherwise, could be appointed to them.14 ‘It is unlikely, therefore, that we shall hear anything further of Mr Jacob’s aspirations, but we think it as well to inform you,’ the telegram concluded.

  Jacob’s other reason for going to Turkey was to see his brother John Louis Sabunji, who was an interpreter in the Imperial Chancellery and, as Nicolson pointed out, ‘a promoter of (Jacob’s) aspirations’.15 Jacob was four years old when his brother had left Diyarbakir in 1863 to study theology at the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome. His position in the Sublime Porte was just one of many twists in Sabunji’s extraordinary career. In 1867, after being excommunicated from the Church over some obscure liturgical dispute, he started publishing a weekly called Al-Nahlah (The Bee) while teaching Arabic, Latin, Italian and Turkish languages at what was later to become the American University of Beirut.16

  In the early 1870s, while on a lecture tour around America, he conceived the idea of creating a painting that would explain the origin and the evolution of all the major religions of the world. He set out on a round-the-world trip which included stops in Utah where he conferred with Brigham Young on Mormonism, and in Japan and China, where he gathered information on Shintoism and Buddhism. He also went to India where, in his own words, ‘he acquired correct notions about Brahmanism’ before travelling to Arabia and Egypt to learn about the Koran.

  Sabunji resumed his publishing activities in Beirut in 1874 but he was forced to flee after he aroused popular anger for his anti-Maronite stand. He moved to Manchester where he found time to submit a patent for stereoscopic photography, the first of several patents he lodged during his lifetime, including one for ‘soap preparations for washing hair’.

  While in England, he began working with the renowned Arabist, the Reverend G. Percy Badger on an Arabic–English dictionary, before resuming publication of Al-Nahlah. He claimed the periodical was patronized among others, by ‘Queen Victoria, the nobility, and the learned personages in England, India, Egypt, and Turkey, as well as the Sultan of Zanzibar’.

  Sultan Barghash of Zanzibar became an important source of financial support for Sabunji’s publishing ventures. He returned the favour by using the journal to heap adulation on Zanzibar’s ruler. The journal’s second issue contained a rendition of the Zanzibar national anthem which Sabunji composed, using the tune and many of the words of God Save the Queen.

  What started off as an apolitical journal—its first issue dealt with subjects, such as Assyrian archaeology, the invention of the telegraph and the remedy for vine disease—soon became increasingly partisan. Following the outbreak of the Second Afghan War, it went from being a supporter of British imperialism to taking a more pro-Arab stand.

  The change coincided with his employment as a tutor in Arabic to Lady Anne Blunt, the wife of the renowned explorer, orientalist and Islamist, Wilfred Scawen Blunt. Sabunji helped Anne translate into Arabic her husband’s articles proposing the establishment of an Arab caliphate, and had them published in Egypt. Blunt referred to Sabunji variously as his ‘attaché interpreter’ or his ‘Oriental Secretary’. He was much more.

  Like Jacob, Sabunji had a genius for foiling plots, collecting information and winning the trust of others. In 1878, at the height of the Egyptian revolution he discovered a secret plan to murder the British Consul General in Cairo, Sir Alexander Malet, and warned the authorities to recall him to London. He also claimed to have saved the life of the nationalist leader Ahmad Urabi who was to be shot for rebelling against the Sultan of Zanzibar, by convincing Prime Minister William Gladstone to give him a fair trial. In 1881, Blunt described how, in Cairo, Sabunji ‘was presently busy the city over seeking out news for me, so that in a very few days we knew between us pretty much nearly everything that was going on’.17

  Blunt’s views on the Arab caliphate challenged Britain’s support for Ottoman territorial integrity in Asia. They also converged with those of Sabunji whom Blunt described as being ‘more in sympathy with Islam than with his own faith’.18 In 1881, Sabunji launched two new pro-Arab newspapers to challenge the Turkish Sultan’s right to the caliphate, Bayan Namut-ul-Umat-ul-Arabiyah and Al-Khalifah.

  At that time, India was the country with the largest number of Muslims. Without their support, his anti-Turkish campaign would be dead in the water. He turned to his younger brother for help.

  Jacob was ideally suited to the task. His contacts in Delhi, the former seat of Mughal power, extended to almost every spice-scented bazaar and rat-infested lane in the city. Writing from London, Sabunji asked his brother to enlist the help of the city’s moulvis to distribute his newspapers and spread his message from the mosques during the sermons recited after Friday prayers.

  The activities of the two brothers did not escape the notice of British intelligence. Numerous telegrams travelled back and forth between Delhi and the Foreign Department in London, monitoring their activities and the effectiveness of their campaign. Jacob’s foray into the geopolitics of Ottoman influence in Asia, it was noted, so angered one moulvi in Delhi that he started his own newspaper written in Persian and published from London. In it, he called upon all Muslims ‘to make common cause in the endeavour to exterminate Christians from countries occupied by Muslims’.19

  To counteract the brothers’ efforts, the Porte began funding its own pro-Turkish and anti-Christian newspaper in Delhi. According to a memorandum from Captain N. Powlett of the quartermaster-general’s department in Simla, the Turkish ambassador in London tried to bribe Sabunji to change his mind, but failed in his attempt ‘because he demanded a heavy price to change his opinion’.20

  There is no evidence that the two men met when Sabunji visited India on his round-the-world trip in the early 1870s. But, in a letter written in November 1883, Sabunji asked Blunt to send his address to Jacob and it seems likely the brothers were finally reunited. Blunt had been to Simla a number of times when his close friend Lord Lytton was Viceroy so, it is possible he had also met Jacob. Sabunji had just been to Colombo where he had a bitter falling out with Urabi, the Egyptian nationalist leader, ostensibly over a hotel bill that the latter had refused to pay. In an agitated letter to Blunt, he called Urabi ‘a pseudo-patriot’, a ‘degraded and ambitious ignoramus’, ‘a bigamist and adulterer’, and the ‘biggest lier [sic!] I ever saw in my life.’21

  After spending more than a decade railing against the Ottoman caliphate, Sabunji’s opportunism eventually took him full circle. In 1888, he started the Foreign Concessions Company and went to Constantinople to seek Sultan
Abdul Hamid’s permission to build a railway from Syria to the Persian Gulf. The concession was denied but the Sultan offered him a job in the Yildiz Palace as secretary, interpreter, political adviser and tutor to his son. He was also expected to read newspapers in seven different languages and translate the most important political articles. Sabunji readily accepted, remaining at the Ottoman court until Hamid was overthrown in 1909.

  When Blunt went to visit Hamid in 1893, he found Sabunji ‘in fine feather, established at Yildiz as the Sultan’s translator and court spy’,22 suggesting that the love of espionage was indeed a family trait. During his tenure in Constantinople, Sabjunji penned a semi-biographical love story centred around the Sultan’s life. The book included a chapter on how girls were procured for the harem, together with a picture illustrating the ideal proportions of a slave girl right down to the length of her foot (ten inches).

  There are few details regarding what Jacob did after he left Constantinople and went to London, but the trip was partly business-related. As he did when he travelled around India, he hired a showroom, choosing fashionable Park Crescent at Portland Place, and took out an advertisement in the local newspapers. According to one such advertisement, the sale consisted of a ‘choice collection of fine specimens of Indian works of art’, including rock crystal cups, covers and saucers ‘all set with Diamonds, Rubies, Emeralds, &c.’ There were also old manuscripts, illuminated and illustrated books, as well as ‘a collection of very fine Indian and Persian Arms, with rare Damascus blade’.23

  Jacob must have been disappointed that the Foreign Office had blocked his taking up the post of Honorary Consul in Hyderabad. He saw the position as affording him protection from his enemies while giving him leverage over the Nizam who still owed him a considerable sum of money. He was also desperate to resume selling jewellery to the only man in India who could afford any stone in the world.