Koh-i-Noor

by William Dalrymple

  Nizam ul-Mulk appealed to Sa’adat Khan to ask Nader to put an end to the violence. Sa’adat Khan ordered him out. That evening, Sa’adat Khan committed suicide by taking poison, horrified at the disaster he had helped unleash. The nizam then went bareheaded, with his hands tied with his turban, and begged Nader on his knees to spare the inhabitants and instead to take revenge on him. Nader Shah sheathed his sword and ordered his troops to stop the killing; they obeyed immediately. He did so, however, on the condition that the nizam would give him 100 crore (one crore = ten million) rupees before he left Delhi. ‘The robbing, torture and plundering still continues,’ concluded van Leypsigh, ‘but not, thankfully, the killing.’15

  In the days that followed, the nizam found himself in the unhappy position of having to loot his own capital city to pay the promised indemnity. Delhi was divided into five blocks and vast sums demanded of each. ‘Now commenced the work of spoliation,’ wrote Anand Ram Mukhlis, ‘watered by the tears of the people … Not only was their money taken, but whole families were ruined. Many swallowed poison, and others ended their days with the stab of a knife … In short, the accumulated wealth of 348 years changed masters in a moment.’16

  The Persians could not believe the riches that were offered to them over the next few days. They had simply never seen anything like it. Nader’s court historian, Mirza Mahdi Astarabadi, was wide-eyed. ‘Within a very few days, the officials entrusted with sequestration of the royal treasuries and workshops finished their appointed tasks,’ he wrote. ‘There appeared oceans of pearls & coral, and mines full of gems, gold and silver vessels, cups and other items encrusted with precious jewels and other luxurious objects in such vast quantities that accountants and scribes even in their wildest dreams would be unable to encompass them in their accounts and records.’ Astarabadi went on:

  Among the sequestered objects was the Peacock Throne whose imperial jewels were unrivalled even by the treasures of ancient kings: in the time of earlier Emperors of India, two crores worth of jewels were used as encrustation to inlay this throne: the rarest spinels and rubies, the most brilliant diamonds, without parallel in any of the treasure of past or present kings, were transferred to Nader Shah’s government treasury. During the period of our sojourn in Delhi, crores of rupees were extracted from the imperial treasuries. The military and landed nobility of the Mughal state, the grandees of the imperial capital, the independent rajas, the wealthy provincial governors – all sent contributions of crores of coined bullion and gems and jewel-encrusted imperial regalia and the rarest vessels as tributary gifts to the royal court of Nader Shah, in such quantities that beggar all description.17

  For a month, hundreds of labourers were employed melting down and casting into ingots gold and silver jewellery and plates to facilitate its transport. Meanwhile Nader had accumulated such a profusion of jewels that he ordered his quartermaster general ‘to make up arms and harness of every kind, inlaid with precious stones, and to ornament a large tent in the same manner. For that purpose, the best workmen that could be procured were employed a year and two months.’18

  While all this was going on, Nader maintained a public attitude of paternal politeness and courtesy to Muhammad Shah, who was kept by his side as if he were Nader Shah’s assistant and deputy, the two often appearing together in durbar. Finally, on 6 April 1739, Nader, the son of a humble shepherd, married his son Nasrullah to a great-great-granddaughter of Emperor Shah Jahan. As fireworks erupted along the banks of the Yamuna, Nader made a speech giving advice to the Mughal royal family on good government and promised to send a force from Kandahar if Muhammad Shah – the bride’s uncle – ever needed help against the Marathas or any other enemy. A month later, on 12 May, Nader held a durbar and placed the crown of Hindustan back on the head of Muhammad Shah, effectively reinstating him as emperor, albeit shorn of his northern provinces to the west of the Indus, which Nader annexed, and ruling now through the grace of the Persian conqueror.

  It was on this occasion, according to Theo Metcalfe, that Nader Shah discovered from the great courtesan Nur Bai that Muhammad Shah had hidden the Koh-i-Noor in his turban, and Nader won it by offering to swap turbans, as brother rulers and as a lasting memento of their friendship. It was then, according to Theo, that the great diamond gained its name – the Koh-i-Noor or Mountain of Light – as Nader held the stone in his hand, awestruck. Sadly, however, the story – wonderful as it is – is not referred to by any of the many contemporary sources, and appears only in much later accounts dating from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. It is almost certainly a myth, though one source, a Mughal courtier named Jugal Kishore, does mention Nader giving Muhammad Shah his own turban ornament, which was attached to the feather of an eagle, an act that may lie at the root of the myth.19

  Instead, the one contemporary story about Nur Bai and Nader Shah has a rather more salty flavour. According to an eyewitness, Abdul Karim, a Kashmiri soldier who had enlisted with the Persian army, Nader was so taken by Nur Bai’s dancing that he offered her half his fortune if she returned to Persia with him. Nur Bai was horrified and promptly took to her bed, claiming that she was too ill and feverish to leave Delhi. Asked afterwards why she had not taken advantage of Nader’s generosity and gained access to his unlimited wealth, she is alleged to have replied that if she had slept with Nader, or gone off with him to Persia, ‘I should feel as if the flower of my cunt had been complicit with his massacres.’20

  On 16 May, after fifty-seven catastrophic days in Delhi, Nader Shah finally left the city, carrying with him the accumulated wealth of eight generations of imperial Mughal conquest. The greatest of all his winnings was the Peacock Throne, in which was still embedded both the Koh-i-Noor and the Timur Ruby.21 The loot was loaded on to ‘700 elephants, 4,000 camels and 12,000 horses carrying wagons all laden with gold, silver and precious stones’.22

  There was a haemorrhage of booty during the first weeks of the retreat, ‘jettisoned by the wayside or carried off by the bare-bottomed peasants of the area’, according to Nader Shah’s court historian Astarabadi.23 As the army passed over the bridge across the Chenab, every soldier was searched and, in order to avoid confiscation, many buried their treasures or tipped the gold and gems into the river, hoping to come back and retrieve their loot later. One camel loaded with jewels took fright and plunged into the river. Other pack animals carrying priceless loads of jewels and solid gold were lost fording the monsoon floodwaters, or fell down steep cliffs as the army wound its way through the Hindu Kush. But most of the extraordinary loot Nader Shah took from Delhi made it back to Khorasan, and was lost to South Asia for ever.

  According to the Kashmiri soldier Abdul Karim, Nader Shah’s ‘own treasure, the jewel office, and the Peacock Throne he sent to Herat’. On arrival the treasures were put on display, including:

  vessels richly inlaid with precious stones, jewelled horse harnesses, sword sheathes, quivers, shields, spear cases, and maces; and the fabulous tent Nader had had lined with jewels. The tent was ordered to be pitched in the Dewan Khaneh, in which were placed the Tukht Taoussee, or Peacock Throne, brought from Dehly, another jewelled throne known as the Tukht Nadery, along with the thrones of several other conquered monarchs. Publication was made by beat of the drum throughout the city and the camp, that all persons had liberty to come to his magnificent exhibition, such as never had been seen in any age or country.

  Its beauty and magnificence are beyond description. The outside of the tent was covered with fine scarlet broadcloth, the lining was of violet coloured satin, upon which were representations of all the birds and beasts in creation, with trees and flowers, the whole made of pearls, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, amethysts and other precious stones; and the tent poles were decorated in like manner.

  On both sides of the Peacock Throne there was a screen, upon which were the figures of two angels in precious stones. The roof of the tent consisted of seven pieces, and when it was transported to any place, two of these pieces packed in cotton, were put in
to a wooden chest, two of which were a sufficient load for an elephant; and the screens filled another chest. The walls of the tent, the tent poles and the tent pins, which were of massy gold, loaded five more elephants; so that the carriage of the whole required seven elephants. This magnificent tent was displayed on all festivals in the Dewan Khaneh in Herat, during the remainder of Nader Shah’s reign.24

  Nader Shah’s reign did not, however, last much longer. Two years later, on 15 May 1741, Nader was riding in the company of his women and harem eunuchs up a narrow wooded valley through the Alborz Mountains above Tehran when there was a loud report from an unseen musket. A lead slug grazed Nader’s arm and hit his thumb where he was holding the reins, before plunging into the neck of his horse, killing it, and throwing the shah to the ground. In the weeks that followed, Nader became convinced that his own son and heir, Reza Qoli, had paid the marksman. He therefore ordered that Reza should be blinded, and his eyes brought to him on a platter. When it had been done, Nader looked at them and began to cry, shaking with grief, turning to his courtiers and screaming: ‘What is a father? What is a son?’25

  After this, the heartbroken and increasingly paranoid monarch descended rapidly into madness.26 Wherever he went, men were tortured and mutilated. The innocent were punished as cruelly as the guilty. Mass executions and grisly towers of severed heads began to mark the passage of his army.27

  It was in 1746 that Père Bazin entered Nader’s service. The two men had originally been introduced by the British East India Company representative at Isfahan which, following Nader’s return from campaign in Central Asia, looked less like his capital city and more like ‘a city which had been taken by assault and then given up to the fury of the conquerors’.

  Each time the Jesuit left the royal palace he would pass the bodies of at least thirty men who had been murdered by Nader’s soldiers or strangled on Nader’s orders. Others were thrown into fires or had their severed heads erected in the grisly pyramids that marked the stages of Nader’s progress: ‘He was the terror of the Ottoman Empire, the conqueror of India, and master of Persia and of Asia,’ wrote Père Bazin. ‘He was respected by his neighbours, feared by his enemies, and lacked only the affection of his subjects.’

  Nader was now in his early fifties, but was sick, probably with some sort of liver infection, and looked much older. In late March, Nau Roz, 1747, Bazin joined the royal camp at Kerman on its march through the barren wastes of the Dasht-e-Lut desert, and by 19 June they were approaching Kalat, in Khorasan, where what remained of Nader’s Indian treasures were stored. Bazin was dazzled. ‘Nothing could equal the riches he had heaped up at Kalat,’ wrote the Jesuit.

  The magnificence of his tents was way beyond anything that history relates about the luxury of the ancient monarchs of Asia.

  One especially, embroidered with flowers on a gold ground, encrusted with pearls and jewels, was of considerable height and length. His thrones were magnificent; the one he brought back from India [the Peacock Throne] is, I believe, the richest one could ever see: there are columns embellished with diamonds and pearls, the roof is loaded with rubies and emeralds inside and out. His five other thrones were also most rich …28

  It was not, however, a happy homecoming. Nader knew that conspiracies were being hatched and that his life was in grave danger, but he was unsure from which direction the blow would come. ‘It was as if he had a presentiment of the misfortune awaiting him in this place,’ wrote Bazin. ‘Over recent days, he had a fully saddled and bridled horse kept ready for him in his harem.’

  The most disaffected of Nader’s courtiers were two of his relatives, Muhammad Quli Khan and Salah Khan: the former was head of the guards, the latter overseer of his household. Salah Khan caused him less concern, as he had no authority over the armed forces, but Muhammad Quli Khan was a man to fear: decisive, respected for his bravery, with great credit among the officers. He was chief suspect, and he was the one to be forestalled.29

  Against this threat, Nader deployed a corps of 4,000 Afghan bodyguards: foreign troops who were entirely devoted to his person, and bitterly opposed to the Persians. On the night of 19 June, according to Bazin, he summoned their chief, Ahmad Khan Abdali. This young man he had first encountered rotting in the dungeons of Kandahar when he captured the citadel on the way to take Delhi. He agreed to train him and take him into his army. Abdali owed everything to Nader and was unquestioningly loyal. Nader now told him:

  I am not satisfied with my guards; but I well know your loyalty and courage. Tomorrow morning I want you to arrest all their officers and clap them in irons. Do not spare the life of any who resist! It is a question of the safety of my person – you are the only ones I trust to guard my life!

  The Afghan chiefs were delighted at this display of respect and trust, and went to put their troops on the alert. The order, however, could not be kept secret, and it almost immediately leaked out. Within an hour, the plotters had learned of it. Muhammad Quli Khan alerted Salah Khan and the two chiefs ‘undertook not to forsake each other, and signed a document to that effect; they resolved to murder their common enemy that very night, as he had decreed their death on the following day’. They confided their plan to sixty officers who enjoyed their complete confidence, and assured them that they all had an interest in the success of this plan as they were all due to be arrested the following day by the Afghans. All signed the document and promised to turn up at the appointed hour, two hours after midnight, when the moon was setting, to carry out the plot. Bazin appears to have relied on the evidence of one of Nader’s favourite women, Chuki, who survived the night and was able to give an eyewitness account of what happened:

  Around fifteen of the conspirators were impatient or merely eager to distinguish themselves, and so turned up prematurely at the agreed meeting place. They entered the enclosure of the royal tent, pushing and smashing their way through any obstacles, and penetrated into the sleeping quarters of that ill-starred monarch. The noise they made on entering woke him up: ‘Who goes there?’ he shouted out in a roar. ‘Where is my sword? Bring me my weapons!’

  The assassins were struck with fear by these words and wanted to escape, but ran straight into the two chiefs of the murder-conspiracy, who allayed their fears and made them go into the tent again. Nader Shah had not yet had time to get dressed; Muhammad Quli Khan ran in first and struck him with a great blow of his sword which felled him to the ground; two or three others followed suit; the wretched monarch, covered in his own blood, attempted – but was too weak – to get up, and cried out, ‘Why do you want to kill me? Spare my life and all I have shall be yours!’ He was still pleading when Salah Khan ran up, sword in hand and severed his head, which he dropped into the hands of a waiting soldier. Thus perished the wealthiest monarch on earth.

  After the bloody scene, the conspirators and their accomplices spread out through the camp, grabbing everything they could of Nader’s possessions and sparing no one whom they suspected of ever having enjoyed his favour … Twice I found myself in the midst of the fighting, gunfire and flashing swords, but somehow managed to escape.30

  What happened to the Koh-i-Noor at this point has long been a mystery. But a previously untranslated Afghan source, the Siraj ul-Tawarikh, gives the answer:

  One of Nader Shah’s harem attendants immediately informed [his most senior Afghan general] Ahmad Khan Abdali. With 3,000 Afghan troopers from the Abdali battalion and other troopers from the Uzbek battalion, Ahmad Khan stood guard until morning over the royal harem. At dawn, he clashed with a group of Qizilbash renegades and evil Afshar who were plundering the royal coffers, routed them, and took charge of all the money and valuables. As a reward for this service, the first lady of Nader Shah’s harem gave Ahmad Khan the Koh-i-Noor diamond, one of two diamonds – the other being the Darya-i-Noor – which Nader Shah had seized from Muhammad Shah Rangila and which had been under lock and key in the harem, along with a peerless ruby [the Timur Ruby, which Nader had called the Ayn al-Hur, the Eye of the Hour
i]. Ahmad Khan then left with the Abdali Afghan cavalry and reached Kandahar in safety.31

  The Peacock Throne had already been stripped of its two principal gems by Nader Shah, who towards the end of his life had begun to wear both the Koh-i-Noor and the Timur Ruby on his armband. Now the rest of the throne was picked apart by looters. Forty years later an old man told the Scottish traveller James Baillie Fraser that when Nader had been murdered his camp was plundered, and ‘the Peacock Throne and the tent of pearls fell into our hands, and were torn in pieces and divided on the spot, although our chiefs themselves little knew their value; many of us threw away the pearls as useless, and our soldiers, ignorant of the value of gold, offered their yellow money in exchange for a lesser quantity of silver or copper’.32

  It was at this point, presumably, that the other great Mughal gems went their separate ways. The Darya-i-Noor stayed in Persia. It was extracted from Shah Rukh, the grandson of Nader Shah, by especially gruesome torture. But long after Shah Rukh had told his captor, a sallow-cheeked former court eunuch named Agha Muhammad, the hiding place of the Darya-i-Noor and all his other crown jewels, the eunuch continued to torture him, asking him to reveal the hiding place of the one gem he did not have – the Koh-i-Noor. Frustrated in his designs, Agha Muhammad finally had Shah Rukh tied to a chair, and his head shaved. A crown of thick paste was built upon his bald pate. Then in a ghoulish coronation ceremony, reminiscent of an episode of Game of Thrones, Agha Muhammad personally poured a jug of molten lead into the crown.