Was the Koh-i-Noor Babur’s diamond? The weights are approximately right, and it looks on balance the most plausible and certainly the most seductive theory as to the origins of the Koh-i-Noor. However, given the absence of a full description of Babur’s diamond, or an account of the gem’s passage from the Deccan back into the Mughal treasury, until further evidence is uncovered in some forgotten Persian source, the mystery remains unsolved. Frustrating as it is, we simply do not know for sure the origin of the Koh-i-Noor and have no hard information about when, how or where it entered Mughal hands. We only know for sure how it left.
3
Nader Shah: The Koh-i-Noor Goes to Iran
In January 1739, the Mughal Empire was still the wealthiest state in Asia. Almost all of the subcontinent was ruled from the Peacock Throne – with the Koh-i-Noor still glittering from one of the peacocks on its roof. Although it had been in decline for half a century, and often racked by internal conflict, the Mughal Empire still ruled most of the rich and fertile lands from Kabul to the Carnatic. Moreover, its decadent and sophisticated capital, Delhi, with two million inhabitants, larger than London and Paris combined, was still the most prosperous and magnificent city between Ottoman Istanbul and Imperial Edo (Tokyo).
Ruling this vast empire was the pleasure-loving Emperor Muhammad Shah – called Rangila, or Colourful, the Merry-Maker. He was an aesthete, much given to wearing tight, feminine peshwaz (long, open-fronted outer garment) and shoes embroidered with pearls; he was also a discerning patron of music and painting. It was Muhammad Shah who brought the sitar and the tabla out of the folk milieu and into his court. He revived the Mughal miniature atelier and employed master artists such as Nidha Mal and Chitarman, whose greatest works show bucolic scenes of Mughal court life: the palace Holi celebrations bathed in fabulous washes of red and orange; scenes of the emperor going hawking along the banks of the Yamuna or visiting his walled pleasure gardens; or, more rarely, holding audiences with his ministers amid the flower beds and parterres of the Red Fort.
In reaction to the harsh Islamic puritan militarism of Aurangzeb’s era, under Muhammad Shah (1702–48), from about 1720 Delhi saw an explosion of unrestrainedly sensual art, dance, music and literary experimentation, with the city’s poets writing some of the most unblushingly amorous Indian poetry to be composed since the end of the classical period a millennium earlier. This was the age of the great courtesans, whose beauty and notorious coquettishness were celebrated across South Asia. Ad Begum would turn up stark naked at parties, but so cleverly painted that no one would notice: ‘she decorates her legs with beautiful drawings in the style of pyjamas instead of actually wearing them; in place of the cuffs she draws flowers and petals in ink exactly as is found in the finest cloth of Rum’. Her great rival, Nur Bai, was so popular that every night the elephants of the great Mughal omrahs completely blocked the narrow lanes outside her house, yet even the most senior nobles had ‘to send a large sum of money to have her admit them … whoever gets enamoured of her gets sucked into the whirlpool of her demands and brings ruin in on his house … but the pleasure of her company can only be had as long as one is in possession of riches to bestow on her’.1
As in Restoration England, this sensuality was directly reflected in the painting of the period, which revelled in images of pleasure, partying and lovemaking: one celebrated image even showed the emperor in flagrante with one of his concubines – perhaps a much-needed attempt to stress the potency and virility of a sovereign who was widely rumoured to be impotent.
But, whatever the situation in his bedroom, Muhammad Shah Rangila was certainly no warrior on the battlefield. He survived in power by the simple ruse of giving up any pretence of ruling: in the morning he watched partridge and elephant fights; in the afternoon he was entertained by jugglers, mime artists and conjurors. Politics he wisely left to his advisers and regents – though he was very skilful in keeping the revenue flowing in from the districts.
The dwindling of the power of the emperor was a process that had been going on for some time, as the empire began to decline after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. Since then, three emperors had been murdered; one was, in addition, first blinded with a hot needle; the mother of the third was strangled and the father of another forced off a precipice on his elephant. A fourth was strangled and thrown down the stairs. At one point during the reign of Emperor Farrukh Siyyar (1685–1719) his regents, the Syed brothers, had been so desperate for cash that they began to pick precious stones from the interior of the Peacock Throne and sell them off for cash to the Delhi moneylenders. The most magnificent stones of all – the Koh-i-Noor and the Timur Ruby – remained in place, however.
As Muhammad Shah’s reign progressed, power ebbed slowly away from Delhi, and the Mughal emperor’s regional governors increasingly began to take their own decisions on important matters of politics, economics, internal security and self-defence. Two rival regional strongmen in particular established their own discrete spheres of influence, and emerged as virtually autonomous rulers: Sa’adat Khan, the nawab of Avadh, became the main powerbroker in the north, with his base at Faizabad in the heart of the Gangetic plains; while to the south, Nizam ul-Mulk established himself as master of the Deccan, based in Aurangabad. The association of both men with the imperial court, and their loyalty to the emperor, was increasingly effected on their own terms and in their own interests. Both men would found dynasties that dominated India for a hundred years. They were deadly rivals, and their rivalry would soon prove fatal for the Mughal state they professed to serve.
In addition to sharing his sovereignty with two overmighty governors, it was Muhammad Shah’s ill fate to have as his immediate western neighbour the aggressive Persian-speaking warlord Nader Shah. Nader was the son of a humble shepherd who had risen rapidly in the army thanks to his remarkable military talents. He was as tough, humourless, ruthless and efficient a figure as Muhammad Shah was light-hearted, artistic, chaotic yet refined.
The finest pen portrait that survives of Nader was written by an urbane French Jesuit, Père Louis Bazin, who became Nader’s personal physician. Bazin both admired and was horrified by the illiterate, brutal yet complex and commanding man he had agreed to take care of. The Jesuit wrote:
In spite of his humble birth, he seemed born for the throne. Nature had given him all the great qualities that make a hero and even some of those that make a great king … His beard, dyed black, was in stark contrast to his hair which had gone completely white; his natural constitution was strong and robust, of tall stature, and his girth in proportion to his height; his complexion was sombre and weather-beaten, with a longish face, an aquiline nose, and a well-shaped mouth but with the lower lip jutting out. He had small piercing eyes with a sharp and penetrating stare; his voice was rough and loud, though he managed to soften it on occasion, as self-interest or caprice demanded …
He had no fixed abode – his court was his military camp; his palace was a tent, his throne was placed in the middle of weapons, and his closest confidants were his bravest warriors … Intrepid in combat, he pushed bravery to the limits of rashness, and was always to be found in the midst of danger among his braves, as long as the action lasted … He neglected none of the means suggested by prudence … Yet sordid avarice, the unheard-of cruelties which wearied his own people and eventually caused his downfall, and the excesses and horrors to which his violent and barbarous character led him, made Persia weep and bleed: he was at once admired, feared and execrated …2
In 1732, Nader had seized the Persian throne, and shortly afterwards deposed the last infant Safavid prince. Seven years later, in the spring of 1739, he invaded Afghanistan and began besieging Kandahar. During the siege, a poet from Khorasan made the journey to present a poem of praise. He read his verses at dinner to the shah, but Nader liked them so little that he had a court usher take the poet around the camp and offer him for sale as a slave. Unfortunately for Nader, there were no takers. Nader then asked, ‘How did you get here?’
The poet replied, ‘On a donkey.’ Nader then had the donkey offered for sale, while the poet was run out of the camp, to general derision.3
Unlike Muhammad Shah, Nader was clearly no great lover of the arts. He did, however, have a keen eye for jewels, and was determined to invade India with a view to replenishing his treasury’s stock of Indian gemstones needed to pay his troops – something with which he knew that Mughal Delhi was overflowing.
Even before Nader Shah had taken Kandahar, there were rumours in Persia that he was secretly planning to mount a raid on the treasures of Mughal Delhi, ‘to pluck some golden feathers’ from the Mughal peacock.4 Indeed he was already carefully cultivating two minor grievances as excuses to do so: the Mughals had recently given shelter to several Iranian rebels fleeing his tyranny, while some Mughal customs officials in Sindh had seized the effects of an Iranian ambassador and refused to return them. Nader Shah duly sent envoys to Delhi to complain that the Mughals were not behaving as friends, and to demand a full apology; but he received no redress. Advance warnings by Nasir Khan, the Mughal governor of Kabul, that Nader was clearly planning an invasion were also ignored by Muhammad Shah’s government in Delhi.
On 10 May 1738, Nader Shah began his march into northern Afghanistan. On 21 May he crossed the border into the Mughal Empire, heading for the Mughal summer capital of Kabul, one of the empire’s most strategic cities. In this way he began the first invasion of India since Babur’s, two centuries earlier. The great citadel of Kabul, the Bala Hissar, surrendered at the end of June and, with no military resources at his command, there was little the Mughal governor could do to save it. As the Delhi courtier, poet and historian Anand Ram Mukhlis noted, the governor
had often written to Muhammad Shah concerning the want of money [to pay his troops], but none of his representations had been attended to. He now wrote to the effect that he himself was but a rose-bush withered by the blasts of Autumn, while his soldiery were no more than a faded pageant, ill-provided and without spirit; he begged that, of the five years’ salary due to him, one year’s salary might be paid, that he might satisfy his creditors and have some little money at his command.5
Receiving no reply to his pleas, the governor of Kabul decided to make a last stand at the Khyber Pass; but Nader Shah outmanoeuvred him and, using a forgotten trail, managed to encircle the Mughal forces, forcing them into a humiliating surrender. Nader Shah then descended the Khyber. Less than three months later, at Kurnal, 100 miles north of Delhi, he defeated three merged Mughal armies – one from Delhi, a second from Avadh and a third from the Deccan – in all, around 750,000 fighting men, with a force of only 150,000 musketeers.6
From the beginning it was clear that the Mughal army, though huge, was little more than an undisciplined rabble. The Dutch East India Company representative in Delhi reported the massive force gathering six miles outside the city, a sea of people ‘two miles wide by 15 miles long. If this army were trained after the European model,’ he noted, ‘it could conquer the whole world. However, there is no order; each commander does as he pleases.’ After years of ignoring the army and concentrating on music and art, Muhammad Shah was now paying the price for many years given over to the happy pursuit of pleasure.
In the days that followed it also became clear that the Mughal army was both incompetently led and painfully slow-moving, capable of advancing only five miles a day. ‘If the army can defend itself, then Nader Shah has to be very lucky to defeat it,’ continued the Dutch report. ‘However, one has reason to fear that if the army of the Great Mughal does not put up an orderly defence, Nader Shah will not have too much trouble in defeating it … Many people look forward to Nader Shah’s coming, because the Emperor is so weak in governing that nothing is really done. His soldiers are badly paid, because the Hindu clerks steal everything and therefore are as rich as generals.’7
Nader Shah’s job was certainly made much easier by the increasingly bitter divisions between Muhammad Shah’s two principal generals, Sa’adat Khan and Nizam ul-Mulk. Sa’adat Khan arrived late at the Mughal camp, marching in from Avadh long after the Nizam had encamped, but keen to show off his superior military abilities, he decided to ride straight into battle without waiting for his exhausted soldiers to rest. Around noon on 13 February 1739, he marched out of the earthwork defences erected by the nizam to protect his troops, ‘with headlong impetuosity misplaced in a commander’, against the advice of the nizam, who remained behind, declaring that ‘haste is of the devil’.8 The nizam was right to be cautious: Sa’adat Khan was walking straight into a carefully laid trap.
Nader Shah lured Sa’adat Khan’s old-fashioned heavy Mughal cavalry into making a massed frontal charge. As they neared the Persian lines, Nader’s light cavalry parted like a curtain, leaving the Mughals facing a long line of mounted musketeers, each of them armed with the latest in eighteenth-century weaponry: armour-penetrating, horse-mounted swivel guns. They fired at point-blank range. Within a few minutes, the flower of Mughal chivalry lay dead on the ground.
Sa’adat Khan was wounded, and fought on until he was captured by the Persians. When he was brought before Nader Shah and told that his rival, Nizam ul-Mulk, had been promoted to his old offices, he took revenge on his own emperor for what he viewed as a personal betrayal and humiliation, after he had risked his life by heading into battle. He revealed to Nader the immense wealth held in the Mughal treasury and hinted that he should raise his demands for an indemnity and reparations a hundredfold.
A week later, as supplies began to run out in the encircled Mughal camp, Nader invited Muhammad Shah to pay a visit under flag of truce. The emperor accepted, and foolishly crossed the battle lines with only a handful of attendants and bodyguards. Invited for negotiations, and magnificently entertained, Muhammad Shah Rangila then found that Nader simply refused to let him leave. His bodyguards were disarmed, and Nader placed his own troops to stand guard over the Great Mughal. The next day, Nader’s troops went to the Mughal camp, and brought over Muhammad Shah’s harem, his personal servants and his tents. Once they had gone over, the Persians escorted the leading Mughal nobles across the battlefield to join their emperor. By evening they had begun removing the Mughal artillery as well.9 The next day, the remaining Mughal troops, now starving and leaderless, were told they could go home.
‘Here was an army of a million bold and well-equipped horsemen, held as it were in captivity, and all the resources of the Emperor and his grandees at the disposal of the Persians,’ noted Anand Ram Mukhlis. ‘The Mughal monarchy appeared to be at an end.’ This was certainly the view of the ambassador of the Marathas to the Mughal court, who fled the Mughal camp under cover of darkness and made it back to Delhi by a circuitous route, through the jungle, only to leave the same day, heading south as fast as he could. ‘God has averted a great danger from me,’ he wrote to his masters in Pune, ‘and helped me escape with honour. The Mughal empire is at an end, and the Persian has begun.’10
A week later, surrounded by elite Persian Qizilbash troops in their distinctive red headdresses, the two rulers marched towards Delhi side by side, and entered the city together. They made the journey seated on elephant-back, in an elevated howdah. Muhammad Shah marched into the citadel of Shahjahanabad in pin-drop silence on 20 March; the conqueror, mounted on a grey charger, followed on the 21st, the day of Nau Roz, with great fanfare. Nader Shah took over Shah Jahan’s personal apartments, leaving the emperor to move into the women’s quarters. ‘By a strange cast of the dice, two monarchs who, but a short while before found the limits of an empire too narrow to contain them both, were now dwellers within the same four walls.’11
The following day was one of the most tragic in the history of the Mughal capital. With over 40,000 of Nader’s soldiers now billeted in the city, many of them in people’s homes, grain prices shot up. When Nader Shah’s soldiers went to negotiate with the grain merchants at Paharganj, near the present-day railway station, the merchants refused to budge and a scuffle broke out. Shortly thereaft
er a rumour spread that Nader Shah had been killed by a female palace guard. Suddenly the mob began to attack Persian soldiers wherever they found them; by midday, 3,000 Persians had been killed.
Nader Shah responded by ordering a massacre of the civilian population. He left the Red Fort at sunrise the next day to supervise this in person. Dressed in full battle armour, he rode out to the golden mosque of Roshan ud-Daula, half a mile down the Chandni Chowk from the Red Fort, to oversee the retribution from the vantage point of its elevated terrace. The slaughter began promptly at 9 a.m.; the worst killings took place around the Red Fort in the Chandni Chowk, the Dariba and the Jami Masjid, where all the richest shops and the jewellers’ quarters were located. ‘The soldiers commenced killing, moving from house to house, slaughtering and plundering the people’s property, and carrying away their wives and daughters,’ remembered the historian Ghulam Hussain Khan. ‘Many houses were set on fire. In a few days the stench arising from so many unburied bodies, which were filling the houses and streets, became so excessive that the air was infected throughout the whole city.’12
In all, some 30,000 citizens of Delhi were slaughtered: ‘The Persians laid violent hands on everything and everybody; cloth, jewels, dishes of gold and silver were acceptable spoil.’ Many Delhi women were enslaved. Whole mohallas (walled neighbourhoods) around the Dariba were gutted. There was little armed resistance. ‘For a long time the streets remained strewn with corpses, as the walks of a garden are with dead flowers and leaves. The town was reduced to ashes, and had the appearance of a plain consumed with fire.’13 A Dutch eyewitness recorded the sickening thoroughness of the slaughter: ‘The Iranians have behaved like animals,’ wrote Mattheus van Leypsigh. ‘It seemed as if it were raining blood, for the drains were streaming with it. As many as 10,000 women and children were taken as slaves.’14
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