Koh-i-Noor

by William Dalrymple

  7.Gyula Wojtilla, ‘Ratnasastra in Kautilya’s Arthasastra’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 62, no. 1 (2009): 37–44.

  8.Radha Krishnamurthy, ‘Gemmology in Ancient India’, Indian Journal of the History of Science 27, no. 3 (1992): 251–60.

  9.Daud Ali, Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India, Cambridge, 2004, p. 164.

  10.Vidya Dehejia, The Body Adorned: Dissolving Boundaries between Sacred and Profane in Indian Art, Ahmedabad, 2009, p. 38.

  11.Ibid.

  12.The Kautilya Arthasastra, translated by R. P. Kangle, New Delhi, 2004, pp. viii–ix.

  13.Adapted from E. Hultzsch, South Indian Inscriptions, Vol. 2, New Delhi, 1992 (reprint), Pt 1, Inscription No. 8, pp. 87–8. Also Vidya Dehejia, The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India, Seattle, 2002.

  14.Adapted from Hultzsch, South Indian Inscriptions, Vol. 2, Pt 1, Inscription No. 8, pp. 87–8. Also Dehejia, The Sensuous and the Sacred.

  15.India in the Fifteenth Century, Being a Collection of Narratives of Voyages to India, edited by Richard Henry Major, London, 1857, pp. 23–5.

  16.Garcia da Orta, Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India, translated by Clements Markham, London, 1913.

  17.Jonathan Gil Harris, The First Firangis, Delhi, 2014, p. 37.

  18.Ibid., p. 41.

  19.Da Orta, Colloquies, pp. 342–52.

  2.THE MUGHALS AND THE KOH-I-NOOR

  1.Babur, The Babur Nama or Journal of the Emperor Babur, translated from the Turkish by Annette Susannah Beveridge, London, 2006.

  2.Ibid.

  3.1 misqal = 6.22 grams or 0.22 ounces.

  4.BM Ms Or 1717, Rieu’s catalogue III, 9565 Treatise on Precious Stones by Mohammad, son of Ashraf al-Hussaini. Quoted by H. Beveridge, ‘Babar’s Diamond: Was It the Koh-i-Nur’, Asiatic Quarterly Review (April 1899), pp. 370–89.

  5.Abu’l Fazl, The History of Akbar, Vol. 1, translated by Wheeler M. Thackston, Cambridge, MA, 2015, p. 549.

  6.Jauhar, The Tezkereh al-Vakiat or Private Memoirs of the Emperor Humayun, translated by Charles Stewart, Edinburgh, 1832, p. 90.

  7.Ibid., p. 91.

  8.BM Persian Mss Or 53, Rieu’s Catalogue. Quoted by Beveridge, ‘Babar’s Diamond’, p. 381.

  9.BM Ms. Add. 9997, Rieu’s catalogue 314b, p. 266. Quoted by Beveridge, ‘Babar’s Diamond’, p. 382. The return of the diamond to India is also referred to in Tarikh-i-Firishta: see Abdul Aziz, The Imperial Treasury of the Indian Mughals, New Delhi, 2009, p. 188.

  10.Quoted by Beveridge, ‘Babar’s Diamond’, p. 379.

  11.Susan Stronge, Bejewelled Treasures: The Al Thani Collection, London, 2015, pp. 24–5.

  12.Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, ‘The Red Stones of Light in Iranian Culture’, Bulletin of the Asia Institute 15 (2001): 82.

  13.Da Orta, Colloquies, p. 342.

  14.‘Allami, Abul Fazl, The A’in-i Akbari, translated and edited by H. Blochmann, New Delhi 1977, Vol. 1, ‘The Treasury for Precious Stones’, p. 15.

  15.Ibid.

  16.Sir William Foster, The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to India 1615–19, as Narrated in his Journal and Correspondence, New Delhi, 1990, p. 270.

  17.Quoted in Stronge, Bejewelled Treasures, p. 29.

  18.Jahangir, Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri or Memoirs of Jahangir, translated by Alexander Rogers, edited by Henry Beveridge, London, 1919, p. 317.

  19.Aziz, Imperial Treasury, p. 173; Jahangir, Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, p. 320.

  20.Jahangir, Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, p. 320.

  21.Ebba Koch, ‘The Mughals and their Love of Precious Stones’, in Halqeh-ye Nur Astaneh-ye Ferdaws, London, 2012.

  22.Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor or Mogul India, translated by William Irvine (four volumes), London, 1907, Vol. 1, p. 222.

  23.Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Baron of Aubonne, Travels in India (1676), translated by V. Ball (two volumes), London, 1889, Vol. 1, p. 233.

  24.Ibid.

  25.Inayat Khan, The Shah Jahan Nama of Inayat Khan, edited by W. E. Begley and Z. A. Desai, New Delhi, 1990, p. 511.

  26.Manucci, Storia do Mogor, Vol. 1, p. 227; and Khan, Shah Jahan Nama, p. 533.

  27.Aziz, Imperial Treasury, pp. 190–8.

  28.Much has been written on the Peacock Throne, but much the most interesting essay is the magisterial study by Susan Stronge, ‘The Sublime Thrones of the Mughal Emperors of Hindustan’, Jewellery Studies 10 (2004): 52–65.

  29.See Bruce Wannell’s ‘Two Versions of a Book of Jewels in Persian: On the Jawahir Nama, or Book of Jewels’ for the Simon Digby Memorial Festschrift (forthcoming).

  30.Stronge, ‘Sublime Thrones’, p. 56.

  31.Khan, Shah Jahan Nama, p. 147.

  32.Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. 1, p. 315.

  33.Ibid., p. 316.

  34.Balfour, Famous Diamonds, pp. 81–5, 173. Balfour accepts the theory of V. B. Meen and A. D. Tushingham in Crown Jewels of Iran, Toronto, 1968, that Tavernier’s Great Table diamond was split in two, possibly by accident, and now makes up the Darya-i-Noor and the Nur al-Ain, or Light of the Eye.

  35.See, for example, Balfour, Famous Diamonds, p. 174; and Malecka, ‘Great Mughal’.

  3.NADER SHAH: THE KOH-I-NOOR GOES TO IRAN

  1.Dargah Quli Khan, The Muraqqa’ e-Dehli, translated by Chander Shekhar, New Delhi, 1989. For Ad Begum, p. 107; for Nur Bai, p. 110.

  2.Père Louis Bazin, ‘Mémoires sur dernières années du règne de Thamas Kouli-Kan et sa mort tragique, contenus dans une lettre du Frère Bazin’, 1751, in Lettres édifiantes et curieuses écrites des missions étrangères, Paris, 1780, Vol. 4, pp. 277–321. These passages are at pp. 314–15, 316–18.

  3.Michael Axworthy, The Sword of Persia: Nader Shah from Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant, London, 2006, p. 182.

  4.Willem Floor, ‘New Facts on Nader Shah’s Indian Campaign’, In Iran and Iranian Studies: Essays in Honour of Iraj Afshar, edited by Kambiz Eslami, Princeton, 1998, p. 200.

  5.Anand Ram Mukhlis, Tazkira, in Sir H. M. Elliot and John Dowson, The History of India as Told by its own Historians, London, 1867–77, Vol. 8, p. 77.

  6.Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Un Grand Derangement: Dreaming of an Indo-Persian Empire’, in Journal of Early Modern History, Vol. 4, Issue 3, 2000, pp. 337–78, p. 357.

  7.Floor, ‘New Facts’, p. 210.

  8.Mukhlis, Tazkira, pp. 82–3.

  9.Axworthy, Sword of Persia, p. 207.

  10.Michael Edwards, King of the World: The Life and Times of Shah Alam, Emperor of Hindustan, London, 1970, p. 15.

  11.Mukhlis, Tazkira, p. 86.

  12.Syed Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin or Review of Modern Times (four volumes), Calcutta, 1790, Vol. 1, pp. 316–17.

  13.Ibid., p. 315.

  14.Ibid.

  15.Floor, ‘New Facts’, p. 217.

  16.Elliot and Dowson, History of India, Vol. 8, p. 90.

  17.Mirza Mahdi Astarabadi, ‘Tarikh-e Jahangosha-ye Naderi: The Official History of Nader’s Reign’, Bombay lithograph 1849/1265, p. 207.

  18.The Memoirs of Khojeh Abdulkurreem, translated by Francis Gladwin, Calcutta, 1788, p. 26.

  19.Syed Hasan Askari, Raja Jugal Kishore Despatch Regarding the Sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah, Indian Historical Records Association: A Retrospect 1919–1948, Vol. 25, Dec 1948. See also Abhishek Kaicker, Unquiet City: Making and Unmaking Politics in Mughal Delhi, 1707–39, unpublished PhD, Columbia University, p. 562.

  20.Abd ol-Karim Kashmiri, Bayan-e-Waqe’, translated by H. G. Pritchard, BM Mss Add 30782, ff. 86–7.

  21.Marvi, Alam Ara-ye Naderi, Vol. 2, p. 739n.

  22.Elliot and Dowson, History of India, Vol. 8, p. 93.

  23.Mark Zebrowski, Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India, London, 1990, p. 52 (from Simon Digby’s unpublished translation of Mirza Mahdi Astarabadi, Tarikh-e-Jahangoshay-e-Naderi).

  24.The Memoirs of Khojeh Abdulkurreem, p. 26.

  25.Axworthy, Sword of Persia, p. 167.

  26.Ibid., pp. 231–40.

&n
bsp; 27.Ibid., pp. 278–9.

  28.Bazin, Mémoires, pp. 320–1.

  29.Ibid., pp. 321–2.

  30.Ibid., pp. 322–3.

  31.Robert McChesney, the brilliant translator of the Siraj ul-Tawarikh, kindly sent me this note about Fayz Muhammad’s account of the assassination and Ahmad Shah Abdali’s seizure of the Koh-i-Noor: ‘Other Afghan sources tend to be circumspect about how Ahmad Shah got the diamond. His own chronicler, Mahmud Husayni Jami, speaks only of turmoil in the army camp after the assassination (see Jami, Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi, Tehran, 2005 edition). But the modern editor of this edition, Ghulam Hosein Zargari Nizhad, says in his introduction (p. 15), “on the very day of the assassination, Ahmad Khan who had seized the Koh-i Noor diamond from the women of Nader Shah’s harem and, along with that had taken other precious objects from the shah’s household, after reaching Naderabad [i.e. Qandahar] began the work needed to establish his rule over the Afghans.” He cites no source for this, of course, but as an Iranian he has no trouble believing it. A source contemporary with the Tarikh-i Ahmad Shahi, the Tarikh-i Husayni (or Husayn Shahi) written during Zaman Shah’s reign, likewise says only that after the assassination Ahmad Shah “headed for Qandahar” (p. 22; this is a manuscript in the archives in Kabul). Tarikh-i Sultani, to the best of my knowledge, says nothing at all about the diamond. The only Afghan source, Shayr Muhammad Khan Gandapur of Dera Isma’il Khan, writing in the mid-19th century (he died in 1885), refers vaguely to the Koh-i Noor speaking of the turmoil and fighting between units of Nader Shah’s army on learning of his death. He says only that Ahmad Khan first strove to “fulfill the rights of his salt” (i.e. suggesting as a bodyguard of Nader Shah he was obliged to protect the household) but then says “As for the Afghans, having beaten back [the Uzbeks and Afsharis who were attacking them] they plundered the shah’s household and seized many precious things and set off for Qandahar” (Tarikh-i Khurshid-i Jahan, Lahore, 1894, p. 169). The long and short of it is that I don’t know where Fayz Muhammad got his information. However, I can see Fayz Muhammad putting the best spin on it by suggesting Ahmad Shah was rewarded for his service defending the harem rather than suggesting he or other Afghans forcibly took it.’

  32.James Baillie Fraser, Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan, in the Years 1821 and 1822, London, 1825, Appendix B, p. 43.

  33.Michael Axworthy, Iran: Empire of the Mind: A History from Zoroaster to the Present Day, London, 2007, p. 173; also Balfour, Famous Diamonds, p. 176.

  34.Balfour, Famous Diamonds, p. 214.

  4.THE DURRANIS: THE KOH-I-NOOR IN AFGHANISTAN

  1.Ganga Singh, Ahmad Shah Durrani, Delhi, 1925, pp. 25–6.

  2.Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, London, 1819, Vol. 2, pp. 281–4.

  3.Mir, Zikr-I Mir: The Autobiography of the Eighteeenth Century Mughal Poet, Mir Muhammad Taqi ‘Mir’, translated, annotated and introduced by C. M. Naim, New Delhi, 1998, pp. 83–5, 93–4.

  4.Singh, Ahmad Shah, p. 260.

  5.Translated by A. Habibi, in Louis Dupree, Afghanistan, Oxford, 1973, p. 337.

  6.Jonathan Duncan, ‘Purn Puri’, Asiatic Researches (1792), Vol. 5 (1799), pp. 37–49.

  7.Singh, Ahmad Shah, p. 326.

  8.Mirza Ata Muhammad, Naway Ma’arek (The Song of Battles), Published as Nawā-yi ma’ar-ik. Nuskha-i khat.t.ī-i Mūza-i Kābul mushtamal bar wāqi’āt-i ‘as.r-i Sadōzā‘ī u Bārakzā‘ī, ta’līf-i Mīrzā Mīrzaā ‘At.ā‘-Muh.ammad, Kabul, 1331 AH/1952 (Nashrāt-i Anjuman-i tārīkh, No. 22 [with a preface by Ah.mad-’Alī Kohzād, without index]; idem: Āryānā, VIII (1328–9 AH /1950), Introduction, pp. 1–9.

  9.Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, London, 1937, p. 90.

  10.Fayz Muhammad, Siraj ul-Tawarikh (The Lamp of Histories), Kabul, 1913, translated by R. D. McChesney (2013), Vol. 1, p. 63.

  11.Olaf Caroe, The Pathans, London, 1958, p. 262; Syad Muhammad Latif, History of the Punjab, New Delhi, 1964, p. 299; Robert Nichols, Settling the Frontier: Land, Law and Society in the Peshawar Valley 1500–1900, Oxford, 2001, p. 90.

  12.Muhammad, Naway Ma’arek, Introduction, pp. 1–9.

  13.Sohan Lal Suri, Umdat-ut-Tawarikh: An Original Source of Punjab History: Chronicles of the Reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh 1831–1839 by Lala Sohan Lal Suri, translated by V. S. Suri, Delhi, 1961; Amritsar, 2002, p. 33.

  14.H. T. Prinsep, History of the Punjab, and of the rise, progress, & present condition of the sect and nation of the Sikhs [based in part on the ‘Origin of the Sikh Power in the Punjab and political life of Muha-Raja Runjeet Singh’], London, 1846, Vol. 1, p. 260; Muhammad, Siraj ul-Tawarikh, Vol. 1, p. 84; Elphinstone, Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, p. 317.

  15.Muhammad, Siraj ul-Tawarikh, Vol. 1, p. 88.

  16.Muhammad, Naway Ma’arek; Shah Shuja, Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja, Introduction, pp. 1–9.

  17.Sultan Mohammad Khan ibn Musa Khan Durrani, Tarikh-i-Sultani, began writing on 1 Ramzan 1281 AH (Sunday, 29 January 1865) and published first on 14 Shawwal 1298 AH (Friday, 8 September 1881), Bombay, p. 212.

  18.Ibid., p. 217.

  19.Muhammad, Naway Ma’arek, p. 5.

  20.Tarikh-i-Sultani, p. 219.

  21.Elphinstone, Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1, pp. 67–8.

  22.Fraser Papers, Inverness, Vol. 30, p. 171. WF to his father, 6 March 1809.

  23.Ibid., pp. 201–6. WF to his father, 19 June and 6 July 1809.

  24.Muhammad, Naway Ma’arek, pp. 10–12.

  25.Shuja, Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja, The 26th Event; also Muhammad, Siraj ul-Tawarikh, Vol. 1, p. 122.

  26.Alexander Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, Being the Account of a Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary and Persia, also a Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus from the Sea to Lahore (three volumes), London, 1834, Vol. 2, pp. 309–10.

  27.Shuja, Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja, The 26th Event.

  28.Muhammad, Naway Ma’arek, pp. 13–15, 35–6, for the promised Rs 200,000.

  29.Shuja, Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja, The 26th Event.

  30.Punjab Archives, Lahore, from Ochterlony in Ludhiana to John Adam, Calcutta, 23 April 1813, Book 13, No. 42, No. 164, p. 98.

  31.Prinsep, History of the Sikhs, Vol. 2, pp. 14–15.

  5.RANJIT SINGH: THE KOH-I-NOOR IN LAHORE

  1.The Hon. Emily Eden, Up the Country: Letters Written to her Sister from the Upper Provinces of India, London, 1930, pp. 198–9.

  2.National Archives of India, Foreign Political Dept, 1850, 14 June No. 74, 75 Subject: Account of the KOHINUR while it was in the possession of the Lahore Durbar previously. Duplicate Copy. No. 174 of 1850 From Major Macgregor CB, Deputy Commissioner, Lahore. To P. Melville Esquire, Secretary to the Board of Administration for the Affairs of the Punjab, Lahore, April 20 1850.

  3.Ibid.

  4.Ibid.

  5.Ibid.

  6.Bhai Nahar Singh and Kirpal Singh (eds), History of the Koh-i-Noor, Darya-i-Noor and Taimur’s Ruby, New Delhi, no date, p. 33.

  7.Eden, Up the Country, p. 209.

  8.Ben Hopkins, The Making of Modern Afghanistan, London, 2008, p. 51.

  9.Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, Vol. 1, p. 143.

  10.Ibid., p. 144.

  11.Khushwant Singh, Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of the Punjab, London, 1962.

  12.Ibid., p. 257.

  13.Prinsep, History of the Sikhs, Vol. 2, p. 158.

  14.Eden, Up the Country, p. 235.

  15.Singh, Ranjit Singh, p. 257.

  16.Jagannath/Juggernaut or ‘Lord of the Universe’ is a deity worshipped by Hindus and Buddhists.

  17.Suri, Umdat-ut-Tawarikh, p. 694.

  6.CITY OF ASH

  1.Prince Alexis Soltykoff, Voyages dans l’Inde, Paris, 1858.

  2.J. Limbird, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, containing original papers, Vol. 8, London, 1845, p. 230.

  3.Satis or suttees, according to ancient Hindu custom, are married women burned alive on the pyres of their dead husbands.

  4.Sohan Lal Suri, Umdat-ut-Tawarikh, translated by V. S. Suri (Amritsa
r, Guru Nanak Dev University 2002), verse 3, lines 484–9.

  5.Ibid., 3 (v.) p. 489.

  6.John Martin Honigberger, Thirty-Five Years in the East: Adventures, Discoveries, Experiments, and Historical Sketches, Relating to the Punjab and Cashmere; in Connection with Medicine, Botany, Pharmacy, &c., London, 1852, p. 100.

  7.Ibid.

  8.Ibid., p. 47.

  9.Ibid., p. 53.

  10.Ibid., p. 54.

  11.Ibid.

  12.Jean-François Allard (French), Paolo di Avitabile (Italian, Naples), Claude Auguste Court (French) and Jean-Baptiste Ventura (Italian, Modena) were all generals in Ranjit Singh’s army.

  13.Honigberger, Thirty-Five Years in the East, p. 57.

  14.Ibid., p. 58.

  15.Hindu priests.

  16.Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India and its Dependencies 28 (1839).

  17.Era, 20 October 1839.

  18.Lady Login, Sir John Login and Duleep Singh, London, 1890, p. 196.

  19.Stephen Howarth, The Koh-i-noor Diamond, London, 1980, p. 112.

  20.Fakir Syed Aijazuddin, The Resourceful Fakirs, Delhi, 2014, p. 253.

  21.Honigberger, Thirty-Five Years in the East, p. 104.

  22.George Monro Carmichael Smyth, A History of the reigning family of Lahore, with some account of the Jummoo rajahs, the Seik soldiers and their sirdars, Calcutta, 1847, pp. 32, 33.

  23.Honigberger, Thirty-Five Years in the East, p. 102.

  24.Ibid., p. 103.

  25.To this day the gate is known as Khooni Dharwaza – the murder gate.

  26.The golden throne of Punjab is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

  7.THE BOY KING

  1.Honigberger, Thirty-Five Years in the East, p. 111.

  2.Prinsep, History of the Sikhs, p. 276.

  3.Honigberger, Thirty-Five Years in the East, p. 112.

  4.The Indian Mutiny, to the Evacuation of Lucknow: To which is Added, a Narrative of the Defence of Lucknow, and a Memoir of General Havelock, compiled by the Former Editor of the Delhi Gazette, London, 1858, p. 194.

  5.Letter from Hardinge to Lawrence quoted in Michael Alexander and Sushila Anand, Queen Victoria’s Maharajah: Duleep Singh 1838–93, London, 1980, p. 7.