Empire: World History - 8. The Koh-i-Noor Diamond

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

A single stone has been fought over for at least 250 years by four different empires, and now sits in the Queen Consort's crown as part of the British royal family's Crown Jewels. William and Anita trace the murky history of one of the world's most famous diamonds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan. And me, William Dalrymple. I got in there. I'd be waiting for a week to do that. It's very well. Can I just say? from a grateful world. Well done. Well done you for saying your name. Excellent.

It's very very good start. Anyway, this is Empire and can I just start off by again thanking you for the deluge of correspondence and affection and love and enthusiasm and encouragement. You really do make it worthwhile. So many lovely responses to last week's episode with Ramachandra Goa on Gandhi. Willie, we've got some questions that have come in. This one, actually, I've got one question, one titbit. Do you want the tip bit or the question first? No, it's like a tip bit. You like a tip bit? Oh, I love this tip bit. You chose

correctly. So, you know I got rather taken, and I have obviously declared my girl crush on Sarah La Devi, who was the rather spectacular woman who Gandhi fell in love with, and we got an insight into the private passions of the Mahatma.

So this... Organising martial lessons for Indian freedom fighters. Yes, and was the first person to, you know, insist on being taught science and, you know, all those wonderful things about Soledavie. Well, this is from Neil Mukherjee, who got in touch saying, I'm so, so happy you mentioned Sarah Lodhavi because she's a distant relative of mine. And here's a little romantic fact about her. Her grandson married Gandhi's granddaughter. No. Yes. The grandchildren got it together. I love that. They didn't. I didn't know that. I didn't know that either. Isn't

that fabulous? Yeah, you chose right. I told you a tip bit. Always go for the tip bit. Now you've got the question. Okay. I've got a question. So this is from Robert Corcoran who says. William, you mentioned in the East India Company episode that the company didn't hire people over the age of 16. Why was that? I'm not sure.

I mean, it definitely was a rule. If you missed your 16th birthday, it was too late to join the company. So presumably it was they wanted them young and impressionable. Your first year you got sent out to Calcutta to the Writers Building where there was, Fort William College, and you went through a sort of rapid course in Hindi, Bengali, accountancy, and all the other things you'd need age 17 to administer great tracks of India. And if they were successful, I mean, many of them died that first couple of years, and Park Street Cemetery is full of 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds who didn't make it through

the cholera or the viral fever, whatever it was, of that first monsoon. But if they did get the antibodies within the first two years, many of them who were successful would retire by 30 and get home and buy themselves a rotten borough and become an MP. You said that beautifully when we did that particular subject, but there's a follow-up from Robert who says, well, yes, you did say they made their fortune. Is it because they were given vast salaries or was it through extracurricular activity that they made their vast fortunes? Like soldiers in the British Army at the same time and soldiers in the East India Company army

at the same time, they were given famously low salaries. And so it was only through extra-collectar activities that they made these forces. And these were not necessarily completely dodgy in that what they were allowed to do was called private trading. So they had the right to join up with an Indian partner and trade in Indian goods. But this was contingent on having an idea of how to do this. And certainly my ancestor, Stair Durunple, whose letters I've been through, whose letters from his 16-year-old self, stuck in Calcutta, not quite sure why he was there in 1755 and 1756, survive until he dies in the black coat of Calcutta in 1756. He gets into business with what he calls a banyan, which means a trader, and he buys a load of saltpeter, and he borrows money to buy this. and he hopes he's going to be able to sell it to enormous profit, but the ship sinks.

So when he dies in the Black Colo Calcutta, he's already managed to lose an entire fortune and dies with enormous debts. So it wasn't necessarily that these young men, you know, went out with a sort of field gun and sort of lined people up and said, hand over your goods. The idea was that they traded and they used the name of the company and the prestige of the company and the authority of the company. to presumably beat down their business partners and rivals and that sort of thing. But that was how they did it.

That was the basic thing, that they would be traders in their own right. So in addition to their jobs, let's say, you know, running a district court in Mochidabad or being in charge of the customs and partner or whatever their official company job was, all these guys would be busy doing deals on silk cottons and, you know, side orders of samoses, as we like to say. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly that. Yeah, so look, another one here from Venei, and then let's crack on with what we're here to talk about.

So Vinae says, an episode on maybe the non-violent players in Indian independence would be good. He did enjoy the Gandhi one, but what about the non-violent? I'm thinking mainly, of course, of Bois and Bugget Singh, says Vina Aya, and I appreciate making this podcast at a very critical juncture in world history. Vinay, thank you. We are doing one non-violent person quite soon, and that'd be. is Utham Singh, who is somebody I've written a lot about. So do stay with the podcast because we have got some of those avenues to explore as well.

Plus, we've had some goading, I'd say, rather than complaints, goading from our Pakistani listeners, that if we've had Gandhi, we should have Jinnah. I think that's actually very good, dear. I think they're absolutely right. I think we should. So let's do that. Particularly as Jinnah, I think everyone, even his greatest critics would admit, was massively caricatured in the Attenborough Gandhi film

where he sits there cackling like sort of some vampire in the corner saying I will make India or break it or I will break India or make it. It's all very sort of caricaturish and he is an interesting character. He is his character who is married to a Parsi, has an open top car,

wears spats and correspondent shoes and is a very different figure from the austere and figure you see on Pakistani Bank Exactly that. Yeah, the moral of the story is do keep emailing. And I know a lot of you are saying, look, are you going to move on from Asia? Yes, we are. And so we do appreciate your thoughts. And William and I have got this virtual map where we're sticking all your suggestions. And we will very shortly, hopefully, announce where we're going to announce it now, because we don't know. But what we do know is we're going to complete this season, which is, yeah, go on a good time. Well, we're here to talk about the Coenor Diamond. Now, this is a thing we've been teasing you about. for a long time, and it is such a good time to be talking about this time. And it is the very reason that William and I are partners in crime, but we'll come to that in a minute. But it's been in the news a lot after the death of Queen Elizabeth because almost immediately, William, it started

trending in India. Give us the Konoa back, right? Exactly. And this is something that I think, you know, will surprise British listeners who do not necessarily associate the death of a queen with a stone they may or may not have heard of sitting in the Tower of London. And in a sense, this again takes us back to the heart of why we're doing this podcast, the massively different perceptions of how Empire looks from the colonised half of the world, as opposed from the metropole. And this, the coenor, this tiny stone that now is a rather small. Not so tiny. It's only the size of an egg. I mean, I wouldn't say no to it. It's huge. I just imagine. It's big for a diamond.

Anyway, this stone, this diamond bears the entire weight of colonial loot on it. And everything that the colonial world stole from the colonised world is symbolized by this one small diamond. It's a cold, hard reminder of two Indians, at least, of their humiliation. But it is also a prism through which we see the rise and fall of many different empires, isn't it? Exactly. And so this episode and those that follow it, and I think we're going to be doing four episodes on the Coenol. You're spoiling you with our Coenore knowledge. Because we love this story and it is the story that brought us together. This story tells the very complicated story of this diamond. And it's not the simple version that many people believe. And well, anything, do you want to talk about how we got together or shall we start on how, on the myth of mythology?

Shall we sort of start because William and I, we have done book tours on this. And William loves to start, particularly in conservative audiences, with this beautiful line, which is everything you've ever thought you've known about the Coenor is. Wrong. You say bullshit. You're saying wrong now. I've been very polite. I've seen you make some.

You've trained me well. Yes. But I have seen, you know, sort of sari-clad three rows. shudder with your introduction across continents. It's true, it's true. But why? Why is it all rubbish? What is the rubbish and why is it rubbish?

So it's interesting, in the Indian press and on a major series in Indian TV lately, we've seen the entire mythologised version of the Coenor, prehistory of the Coenor, rolled out time and time again. And I mean, literally, there must have been a hundred articles that have turned up on Google news on my feed in the last fortnight, all of which give this mythologised version of the diamond's history for which there is not a single tread of evidence. What's the mythologised version? So this all goes back to the Kakati.

So tell us what is being peddled out there. Yeah. So the mythologised version is that the diamond was mined from, and bottomless antiquity by slaves working in the deep mines of Golconda. that this enormous diamond, the largest in the world, was found, and the Kakatia dynasty in South India, placed it as the eye of an idol in a great temple. The temple was then raided by the wicked Muslims, particularly the generals of Aloud in Kalji,

who stole it and took it to Delhi, and then successive murderous dynasties of Afghans and Turks stole it from one another, till eventually it reached the hands of the Emperor Barbo, who then lost it. And on it goes. But the reality actually is that there is not a single historical mention of this stone until one of Nadia Shah's biographers mentions it in about 1740. We're going to counter that. My question to you is why has this fake news, hashtag fake news, even been released upon the world?

And you did a wonderful thing while we were doing this, is you traced the source of said bullshit. Where did it come from? It all goes back to a document written by a young officer in Delhi. And I have held this document because it still survives in the bowels of the Indian National Archives on what used to be called Rajputt and which now is called. Well, it's Gertavya, but of course you should know this. Keep up, man.

It's only been known it for a week. It is the road of duty. Shocked and a ball that you don't know this, yes. Anyway, it's only been called that for two weeks, so I'm allowed not to... You're at least a bit ashamed. So what is it that you held in your hot little hand? So in my hot little hand, in the archive, I just looked up in the Victorian indexes in the National Archives. I simply went to Coenor and got up the documents.

There were about 20 documents listed under this. And the earliest is a document by a man called Thirteen. Theo Metcalf, who's a young officer in Delhi, and he was commissioned by his father's friend, Lord Dalhousie, who had got his hands on the diamond, as we'll hear soon in one of the episodes to come, in 18, what year is it? 1849. 1849 on the 29th of March, the diamond enters Lord Dalhousie's possession. And he commissions this young officer who's in Delhi to get the juice on the diamond because Metcalf is in Delhi. He knows all the princes and princesses who are still there in the mogul headquarters of the Red Fort in Delhi. And he is commissioned to go

up to the Red Fort and also to talk to the oldest jewelers in Chandni Chow and gather all the gossip. And Theo does this. And I can read to you the opening lines of his report. And he says, I cannot but regret that the results are so very meager and impover. But first, he says, according to the traditions of the eldest jewellers in the city of Delhi, as handed down from family to family, this diamond was extracted from the mine called Coenor, the mountain of light, four days from Missouli Patnam in the northwest on the banks of the God ofari during the lifetime of the God Krishna, who's supposed to have lived 5,000 years hence. And then all this other succession of dynasties is listed about. You and I may be imperfect as historians, but we do a little better than go down the local shops and have a chat. We do. And then say that this is history.

And that's what Theo MacGrav did. He basically gathered gossip. He gathered gossip from the Jewelism Daily and from the Red Ford, and that version has not only appeared on Wikipedia and on every single Indian news outlet. But when you and I went to work on this, we found that rather, I mean, disappointingly, but fascinating as a historical thing, there's not a mention of it before 1740. So it may have been the Kakata dynasty, it may have passed Elad in Kilgi, it may have been Barbo's Diamond, there's a whole range of stories associated with it, but nothing can be proved.

There's not a shred of genuine primary historical source for any of it. Okay, well, if you want genuine primary, real, hashtag real news, stay tuned. Welcome back. So we're about to take you on quite the roller coaster ride with the Coenor diamond. Actually, there is so much to tell you about this diamond. So many dynasties has it passed through that we've decided that we're going to do a special two-for-one week. So we're going to be releasing another episode of Coenor on Thursday. So two this week and two next week. Because just the story is so, so good. And we want to tell you everything. Utter a complete mayhem, why it is for four episodes. Do you remember how this all came about? It was at the Jai Po Literature Festival, and we realised that you and I had both written in a sense two halves of the story in our previous books, that these were things we knew about. We knew stories which we got from manuscripts, which had never been published, which had never

seen the night of day before. And we realised that this one stone was in a sense a symbol for many Indians. It represents everything that the British have taken from India. The Coie North, now sitting in the Queen Mother's Crown in the Tower of London, for many Indians represents the looting, the conquest and the pain of empire. You're not kidding. I learned my best swears, all my swears at the Tower of London. So when I was growing up, it was the place that any visitor from India or Pakistan would

say immediately, coming out to Peter Airport, take me to the tower. And you would know where the Coenor diamond would be because there would be knots of brown faces swearing in the most appalling way and using a word, chore, Chor, thief, thief, give it back to us. And what's even more hilarious now is it because of these knots that didn't move.

They instituted a moving walkway. Now you know where it is because people are moonwalking. Backwards. Backwards to stay in front of the diamond for the longest. But you're quite right. The last time it was seen out in the wild was at the Queen Mother's funeral. It was on, it's in the crown,

the Queen Consort's crown. Because I should say the Cohen or down, we're going to go into this in much more depth. have heard of it. You will know it as the world's most cursed diamond. That has led to not one single male regent wearing it in their crown for fear of this supposed curse, which is it will reduce a man and his kingdom to ashes and only a woman can wear it with impunity. Since we wrote this book, I met someone who actually queued up to pay their respects to the Queen Mother. And he said that the coffin was put in the middle of Westminster Hall next to Parliament, lit from the

back by this huge stained glass window. And he finally got to the top of the queue and entered Westminster Hall just as the sun was setting. And on top of the coffin, they had the Queen Mother's crown. And on top of the crown was the Coenol diamond. And he described walking into the gloom of Westminster Hall and the light refracting through the Coenol. You can see it from 200 yards away, the light beaming out from the... Can I just say, this sounds like a really good pitch for the movie, right?

While you're telling this story, I always would be going, ah, it's a range of a man. I mean, let's just say that did happen. I like that. I like that story. We should say it doesn't look today as it looked before, where we're going to start this story. But just describe William what it looks like today. Well, it's a really important point, in fact, that it doesn't look like it used to do, because there are very different tastes for diamonds, just like, you know, people like different sorts of cooking in India and Britain.

So, weirdly enough, there is fashions. styles for diamonds. And in medieval Europe, as in India, people like their diamonds completely as they emerged from a mine, maybe a little bit of tinkering at some of the corners of things, but basically they like them natural as they appeared. And what was important was their size. But the Europeans, from about the 16th century, started getting very excited by elaborate cuts, by what they called brilliant cuts, which these facets would bring out the sparkle in a diamond. But it often meant losing quite a lot of the diamond. And you could often lose even 50% of a diamond to get that perfect symmetrical cut.

Yeah. I mean, the brilliant cut is any of you who are lucky enough to have rings, which have diamonds, and it's pretty much that cut. So whether it's a rose cut or a square cut, they cut it for shine. And, well, bling, as we call it in this country. They cut it for bling. This is important because India, before the discovery of the new world mines in Brazil and so on in the 18th century, India was the source of all the diamonds in the world. They all came from

India. And they didn't come interestingly from, you know, sort of King Solomon's minds, from deep down in the earth with slaves with pickaxes, smashing away at walls and chained together and suddenly discovering some diamond. In actual fact, they were alluvial. They were, they were found in the beds of dead rivers, left by long extinct volcanoes from millennia, ago. And so the image you have to have in your head of Indian diamond mines is more like, I suppose, our image of the Midwest or the gold rush with people sieving for gold. Nuggets. And you'd take your sieve and you'd go through this a libel. Maybe if you were incredibly lucky, you come across a tiny natural octahedral diamond, which is not uncommon even now in the God of Vare Delta.

And when you're saying, you know, if you were lucky, I mean, these are teeny tiny things. Tiny, tiny, tiny things. Which are often, I mean, again, very different from how we imagine a diamond. When we see a cut diamond today in a ratler's ring or whatever, it's this flat thing and it's shiny. A natural diamond is an octahedral crystal. It's long, it's like the shape of your pinky, with a little pointy top. But with the quirks of mineralogy, occasionally you get a vast diamond.

You get an enormous thing, the size of a quail's egg or even a pigeon's egg. Well, they describe it, don't they? The konaur, when it was uncut, when it sort of came into the world in its natural glory, we think as the size and heft of a hen's egg. And the important part of, in a sense, the story when we were trying to cut through the myth of the Kohinor, when we were researching this book and trying to actually find the facts, is that it turns out that the Coenor is not unique. Today people, particularly people from the subcontinent who have been brought up with the story

of colonial looting and how this was the symbol of India. Oh, they say it's the biggest, it's the biggest, the biggest, the biggest diamond. Yeah, give it back. It's not the biggest. Today, I think, is even as low in the rankings as the 90th biggest diamond. I didn't check this time, but every time I have checked, it's slipping down the order. Because the African mines today are the ones that produce these enormous gems. And every year a new one is found or released into the market because there's a monopoly.

It's another story of it. There's a fantastic world shenanigans in modern diamond marketing. But the Indian gems were not infrequently. They were found very, very large gems. And these were a major early Indian export. Yeah. And they were used both for decoration and for, and for power and symbolism of power and rulership.

But it also was actually a useful tool, of course, because just like we use diamond-cutting tools today, they did in antiquity. And I've read that many Egyptologists believe that the pyramids were cut with early Indian diamonds. And ditto, you find them being used very early on in early China. So at the very beginning of Indian history, when India's merchants beginning to travel through the Red Sea,

some of them are arriving in Egypt, some of them are bringing spices, and the Greeks and the Romans are buying a lot of Indian products. One of the first things that's coming into Egypt and hence across the Mediterranean to Europe are diamonds, which are exotic. They don't exist in Europe, and for that reason, they have very, very high value. You can also understand then why it is that these gems in particular

become cemented in the Western psyche as exotic. and extraordinary and almost magical because the stories that are coming over with those people who are trading are also of worlds that have no resemblance, worlds of heat and spice and magic and all of those things sort of come like a cloak around these diamonds from the east

which is a place that most people are never going to see. There's been an awful lot of very interesting scholarly work on this lately and for example they found that when they were looking at the mummies, of Ramesses II, they found Indian peppercorns up his nose as part of the mummification process. Ditto, using the Indian diamonds to cut the pyramids. Because it's from the magical land. It's a magical land.

But also, it isn't just that it's a magical, mystical thing. There's a very hard-headed Indian commerce as a day. Marketing boards. And as today, it's Gujarati merchants. Right, right, right, right. And so we've been in the last few years, all sorts of stuff is done. And we could do an episode on this maybe one day. For example, there's a new site that's been uncovered on the island of Socotra, which is in the Red Sea between Yemen and Somalia.

And they found a cave that's basically full of first century BC Gujarati graffiti. Oh, that's tremendous. With all these sea captains, some of whom are Hindu, some of whom are Buddhist, heading to back and forwards to Egypt. So again, we often think of India as being this sort of slightly sort of mystical country up to all sorts of strange stuff in the ocean. But as ever as today, it's a massive economic force. It's powerful. It's rich. And everyone in the West wants not just the spices and the cottons.

They want the diamonds. So look, the reason we're telling you all of this, and we're going to get to the star attraction, the shiny star attraction of the Kohenor in a moment. It's just to give you a sense of the world as it was and the Kohenor's place in it. Now, to look for the Kohenor, the most reasonable place, and we thought this when we were researching the book, would be to go to India's, aren't there. answer to Samuel Pepys. It's a man called Barber. He was a Mughal emperor, 16th century. And he writes about everything. He writes a lot, doesn't he? I mean, the Barbaranama, as it's called, the book of Barber, is a really detailed thing. And he likes to talk about gems, doesn't he? So in 1526, the whole of Indian history changes. In fact, the whole history of South Asia and

Central Asia has changed forever. There's a completely improbable invasion of India by a man who's effectively a refugee. And this man is Babo. He's been kicked out of Uzbekistan by the arrival of the Uzbeks. Babbo goes down to Kabul and he uses this as a springboard to attack India, which he regards as a source of enormous wealth. India is not a country he particularly likes. He doesn't want to be there, but he wants the wealth of India. And in 1526, he attacks the king of Delhi, he's a man called Ibrahim Lodi. And the first thing that his son, Humayon, gives him, when he arrives is an enormous diamond. Now, that diamond may or may not be the Coenor. The important point is that Barboe finds the Mughal Empire. We're going to be talking a lot about

the Mughals in this and many other episodes, I think, of this podcast. Because the Mughals are the force that turns India into the premier economy of the world. Today, we often think of India as a poor country or a third world country, particularly people in Britain, tend to dismiss it in this way. But for most of history, India, along with China, is one of the two major economies of the world. And under the moguls, it becomes the biggest workshop of the world. What Manchester would be in the 19th century, in 18th century, it's Bengal. There are a million looms in Bengal producing incredible amount of silk and jewelry. And the moguls who are often depicted in Bollywood films as these guys lying around in palaces,

dropping mangoes into the mouths of concubines with fluttering white pigeons. behind them. Like anything in life, that wealth came from somewhere, and a lot of that came from the wealth of the textile trade. And it's this massive economic force. And that's why you have, in later periods, you have all, first the Portuguese, then the Dutch, and finally the British going to India. Not because they, it's some sort of Elizabethan, you know, save the children fund charitable exercise. It's because they want the wealth of India. It's incredibly rich. I just say that's your two-sentence summary. That's hilarious. I mean, I would I would have summed it up.

They are to India, what the Romans were to Britain. You know, just this sort of arrival of an empire building sense. They wanted a milk a place for every penny. But I like yours too. It's good. But for our subject, what's important is that they have a different idea of what's a beautiful gem. Previously in Indian history, everyone had put diamonds at the top of the hierarchy. But the moguls like redstones.

They like rubies and spruce. Spinels, which is something we don't really talk about today, which are these redstones from Badakshan. And the reason is that they're all over Persian poetry. Hafez, Fadazzi, Faddazhi writes in the Sharnami, when the sun gave the world the color of the spinel, dark night set foot on the celestial vault. So suddenly you've got a change in the idea of what's important. And the Indians who've been very, very excited about diamonds, now find that their rulers are obsessing about redstones. So Barber doesn't are rather unhelpfully mention it, but we do know, we do if it's appearance in the Mughal dynasty. But it's through a man called Shah Jahan.

Now, you might not have heard of him, but you will have heard of his greatest hit. It's his greatest work is the Taj Mahal, which I'm sure any of you have been to India have tried to beat a path towards. But he also made something else. He made the peacock throne. Now that, it's not a throne as we think of it today. Also, it was worth four times what the Taj Mahal was worth. William, I mean, just describe that peacock throne for us. So the moguls were very strong on their aesthetics.

They loved beautiful things. They loved miniature paintings and the whole miniature tradition of the moguls. There's beautiful images of all these tiny figures on these gorgeous manuscripts. But they were obsessed a bubble with gems. and the emperor Jahangir in the 16th century is roughly a contemporary of Elizabeth I, in England, gets his nobles to give him gems on Naros, which is New Year's Day.

And these guys line up and if they want promotion in court, they have to give the best and biggest gem. So by the time that Jahangir dies, the mogul treasury is heaving with enormous gems. They've got enormous. I mean, there's loot itself, but there's also, they've captured quite a lot of the mines in the center of India. And now everyone is buying these things in order to get preferment at court. It's the quickest way to get a posh job to become a governor of a province or a major aristocrat.

And so when Jahangya San Shah Jahan comes to the throne, he finds vaults full of these things that are doing no useful job as far as he's concerned. And he comes up with a brilliant idea of turning this, in a sense, stagnant wealth, sitting in vaults, into something that could actually proclaim the power of the dynasty. It's like Ali Baba's cave and just sort of sweeping it out and saying, right, I'm going to make a piece of furniture. And they make a piece of furniture. Not just a piece of furniture, the most valuable piece of furniture ever made. And so they make this throne that is a domed, covered object, more like in our eyes a sort of ice cream kiosk than a throne as we think of it. Gaudy as anything, isn't it?

It's not a seat. It's this domed baldachin, and they cover every centimeter of it with the largest gems in the world. And it isn't just a shiny thing. It's very cleverly structured. So it reflects the throne of Solomon as written about in the Quran. And as well as looking at it and thinking, God, these are the richest kings in the world. There's also a sensation. that a Muslim would immediately associate it with King Solomon,

who's the symbol of justice, who's the symbol of wisdom. So this is an early example in a sense of using art for propaganda. So Shadhaun is a master of this, and he turns the jewel vaults of the Mughal treasury into something that's actively an act of propaganda proclaiming the power of the dynasty. Tell us, tell us put us out of our misery. Is the Cohen-all now going to make its debut in the world?

So the Coenor, for the first time we can say with certainty, the Coenor is on the peacock throne. It's on the top of the peacock throne. And the peacock is named after the peacock on the top of the peacock throne. In some versions of images, there are two peacocks. In one version, one picture, actually three peacocks on the top. Okay. But according to the best source we have, the Coenor was the head of one of the peacocks. And this is Marby?

Who tells us this? It's the historian Margie, right? The first time we actually get the name Coenor. and we know that we're dealing with the stone which is now sitting in the tower of London on the Queen Mother's throne. The first time we could actually say there's no question it's there. He names it. He names it

the mountain of a lion of a hen's egg and it is the head of the peacock on the peacock throne. And this is when the peacock throne has already gone. It's left Delhi by the stage. It's been captured by the Persians. Wait, wait, wait, whoa, you're jumping ahead and there's too much good stuff here because at the moment. So there he is, Shahjah, happily ever after, sitting in his throne, he'll rule for a million years on the throne of Solomon.

And yet. And yet, at the time, in the time it's built, what the chroniclers in Mogul India are pointing out are not the diamonds on the top, which is what we are obsessed by. They're pointing out all the redstones, particularly Timor's Ruby on there. So we have lots of description of the peacocks' throne when it's first unveiled as this kind of incredible thing in the palace. And everyone writes about it. And there's many, many, many, but they don't point out the diamonds.

They point out of arms soon. But they really should because, you know, some may say, malevolently, that diamond is looking at the great Mughal Empire and rubbing its little faceted hands together. And almost immediately that he builds this thing, things begin to go wrong. He has many sons. And in almost every generation of the Mughal Empire, there's a big squabble. As the father has a stroke or near his death, the sons begin to arm themselves. We had one very lovely son, who it seems to be quite popular, Darasuko. Shukho's the son that everyone wishes have taken over a one.

The man who should have been king. But like the kind of Tory party elections, you never get the right one. It's always Boris. You may say that I couldn't possibly comment. But the thing is, so Darashiko is the one everybody wants. But then there's another boy, the sort of the malevolent boy. The malevolent one is the man who becomes the next emperor and takes the name Orangzeb. Alamgear Orangzeb.

And he is, there's one. Wonderful accounts of the civil war leading up to it by lots of European commentators. Because at this stage, lots of Europeans are going there because it's so rich, you have all these in a sense sort of poor Europeans going to work there. Rather than having in the 1950s and 60s, Bangladesh immigrants coming to work the mills in Bradford, you have in the 16th century and 17th century, poor Europeans going to try and get jobs in Mogul, Mongolia. But just with Orangzeb, I mean, the reason he's got a bad reputation among

some parts of India. Others say he's one of the greatest Mughal emperors who's whoever lived. But certainly those who criticise him, he was mean. He, you know, possibly poisoned his brother and imprisoned his poor father, his poor grieving father in a cell. Well, one of the reasons why it's so interesting doing a podcast at this time in history that's dealing with Indian history is that Indian history, like some other parts of the word, like, for example, the history of Israel and Palestine, where you have two different contested views of history, which are completely at odds with each. other and almost don't meet each other at any point. This is now happening in India and in

between India and Pakistan. So in traditionally in Pakistan, Orangzeb's been looking at as a great conqueror as a great martial leader. And increasingly in India, particularly now under the new BJP Modi Hindu nationalist world of modern India, Orang Zeb is the ultimate villain. Yeah. He is the kind of Count Dracula, the Lord Voldemort, they take your evil. So put the Dath, D'Ath, D'Reng Zab to one side. The reality of Orang Zab, though, did he or did he not poison his brother and in prison his dad in a cell, leaving him to rot away? Yeah, there's several brothers now competing.

It is literally like the Tory party leadership. You know, you have too many contenders. They're all suddenly popping up. And as, again, with the Tory party leadership, they begin to ally and make alliances. And then one or another stabs the other in the back. So the first one that joins Orang Zab is Murad. but he's got, Orangzeb gets him drunk, puts him in fetters and then feeds him poppy water. So he loses his mind and goes mad.

He then defeats Dara Shuko in battle. Dharishuco is paraded through Delhi on the back of a dirty donkey and then murdered. And he then locks his father, Shah Jahan, in the apartments of the Royal Palace in Agra, effectively under very fancy house arrest. And what we don't know is what happens to the diamond. collection. And this is one of the great mysteries. Because when there's a European jeweler who comes at this time called Tavernier, who's trying to gather diamonds for the son king. This is now the period of Louis XIV and Versailles and all that whole wonderful world of excess and far too much

wealth. And Tavernier begins this process of these diamonds coming from Mogul India and going to Europe. And he is finally, after many applications, is shown Orang Zeb's jewel collection, and he draws them. So we get the first images of these things. And the Kohinor is not there. He talks about the great mogul diamond, but it's a different shape. And the reason is, I think certainly, if you put all the pieces together, is that the reason he didn't see it was it wasn't in the jewel collection. It was on the roof of the peacock throne still. And while he sees Orang Zeb in this from a distance, because there's a strict hierarchy in court

and the posh nobles are at the front than the lesser nobles in the middle and finally visitors like Tavernier right at the back of the public audience he can't actually see these enormous diamonds flashing on the roof of the Coenor. So again we have a detailed description

of the Mogul treasury and bizarrely there's no mention even now of the Coenor. So where is the Coenor diamond? Where does it pop its shiny little head up next? So after the death of Orang The Mughal Empire, which for 150 years, has ruled all of India is the richest economy in the world, covers not just India but modern Pakistan, Bangladesh, all of Afghanistan, a slither of Iran.

This huge empire with a million men in its army, this unassailable sort of fact in the center of Asia, crumbles incredibly quickly. The Marathas ride out of the hills above Bombay. They capture Surat, the great Mughal port. artists for those, again, just there, they're largely based on what is now modern-day Maharashtra, but a really martial race, a warrior cast, if you like. Then there are the Sikhs of the Punjab, and they're threatening Delhi from the north, and then the Jat's near Agra. So you've got three different competitors,

and any one of them might seize Delhi and seize the Carino. But it's none of them in the end to get this sort of ripe mango about to fall off the tree. It's a complete outsider. It is a man who comes from nowhere, from Persia, and his name is Nadia Shah. So Nardashar is the son of a shepherd or a furrier from a very humble background. He joins the Persian army, and he rises to the top. And he then does what we today would call a military coup. He overthrows the Safavid Empire, and he takes charge.

And he is a military genius. He invents something, or he uses something called the swivel gun, which is like, the kind of light tank of its time. It's a huge gun, a jazil, which can be put onto a horse with a tripod. And with that, he expands the power of Persia. But his real enemies are, his real enemies, are the Russians and the Turks. And he needs money to fight them. So he says, I'm going to pluck some golden feathers from the mogul peacock's tail. Well, now the mogul peacock's tail is being presided over by a man who is very unlike Orang Zeb. So the time is now passed since Orang Zay, the meany, stroke, genius,

whichever way you want to take this, has been on the threat. It's now a man called Rangila, Mohammed Shah Rangila, who is one of my favorite characters in history, because he's entirely an esthete. He's slightly useless as a rule of them. He likes a party.

He loves a party. He likes cross-dressing. He does. He likes... He wears pearly shoes. He wears pearly shoes. And women's outfits. Yes.

And actually doesn't care. I mean, you know, there are, whenever we've done this talk on the road, there is one slide I beg you not to show. And you show where religious fervour. I just look at all the... It's got us in trouble in every country. I mean, I look at all the aunties and swooning in the audience. But it is basically ancient porn.

Hamishab with his girlfriend. With his girlfriend doing things that should not be done in public. But there he is doing it. In our slideshow. It is all about pleasure with Rangila. And he, culturally, hugely important figure, you know, the sitar, which now is in every Indian restaurant, and it's almost the inevitable soundtrack of anything about India. The sitar is introduced to court music by Rangula.

The tabla, again, you've got one in this room. I've got on here, yeah. The basic Indian drum today is introduced to court music by Ranghila. So culturally, he's this hugely important figure. Militarily, he's a complete catastrophe. He's a strategic dofus. Nader Shah, who's this sort of completely ruthless, single-minded, militaristic character with this small, tight army that can't be defeated.

It's also humorous. And we should describe, we've done Rangela, who's this sort of pretty boy of the Mughal dynasty. But then on the other hand, you've got Nathashar who is austere. He's austerity made flesh. He wears black. He has his sort of sharp, pointy beard and facial furniture. He never knowingly smiles in any picture at that they've seen. Let alone the kind of Rangheela portraits.

I mean, this man is a serious man. So he goes out of Persia and he takes Afghanistan. He attacks Kabul. And the major centre, not like a kind of poor war-torn country at this point, but the summer capital of the Mughal Empire. It's a hugely rich, incredibly sophisticated city. He captures it without resistance. He comes down the Khyber Pass.

He attacks Peshawar. He captures that without resistance. And he captures Lahore. And at that point, finally, Mahamashar, Rang Gila gets his act together, summons the nobles of his empire, and three armies converge at a place called Karnal. So that there are 1.5 million men waiting in this camp. Trouble is that... Sorry, just a minute. You did just say 1.5 million people on Rangela's side.

But we seem to get the impression that there were rather more jugglers than soldiers in this camp. The whole of, you know, if you know, Delhi, the whole of card market has turned up. All the ladies in their deal. sunglasses or their 18th century equivalent are there. This is the best. I mean, this is why I love him. He's such an idiot. He brings musicians.

He brings many chefs, many different cuisines, are on offer on the front line. There are jugglers. There's entertainment. There are women. What is he doing? And meanwhile, the Persians are approaching at speed. A small army, but tooled up. Oh, dear.

There is just one confrontation. And it's an extraordinary. I mean, if ever this gets made into a film, we'll be a wonderful moment. Because the cream of Mogul Shivalry wearing heavy horse armour, shining helmets, gorgeous plumes and penance. Game of Thrones. Finery, yeah. Stretch out over five miles on the plains of Karnal. And they begin to charge.

The Persians deliberately retreat and withdraw, pretending to be worried by this. Yeah. And there's all these light cover at the front. At the last minute, just when the charge, has reached a point where it can't stop. The light Persian cavalry part like a curtain left and right. And there are these swivel guns, these huge jazales facing them. Five minutes later, it's all over.

Yeah. The cream of the mogul army is dead on the ground. And that evening, Nadia Shah, knowing his enemy, sends an invitation to Rangheela to come to dinner. Just, oh, and what does this idiot do? Hello. Come to dinner. I'm your slaughterer. Would you like to come home for a bite?

I like supper. And what does Ranghila, the Egypt do? He rubs his hands and says absolutely. And he comes over with his jugglers, with his musicians. And they have this lovely dinner together. But at the end of it, one can imagine Nadia Shah snapping his fingers or whatever. And all the handful of bodyguards that Mohammed Shah has brought are arrested. And Mohammed Shahangirah is told that he's now the guest of Nader Shah.

And he can't go back. So the next day they send for more concubines to keep him busy. And the day after that, they ride into Delhi together with Nadeh Shah and Hamid Shah on the same elephant. And everything, of course, quickly goes wrong. The people of Delhi rise up against the Persians who are busy sort of molesting girls in the bazaar and so on. Initially, because of the surprise, the people of Delhi massacre quite a lot of the Persian army. But then Nader Shah comes out of the Red Fort with the cavalry, with all the heavy, heavy guns and there is a massacre.

It just runs with blood. The centre of deli is destroyed. And there are lots of descriptions of this. It is just utter carnage. This is the largest city in the world. There's a million people in there. It is wholesale slaughter. They just go out of killing everybody.

And I mean, we have wonderful reports from ambassadors saying this is the end. The Mughal Empire which has run this part of the world for so long is now over. Six weeks later, Nardashar leaves Delhi. With him, he takes 10,000 wagons of jewels. and gold. The six weeks between the massacre and the departure are spent melting down the gold into ingot so they can be transported, so they can carry it. And 8,000 wagons leave Delhi on the train off. And of course what happens is that every peasant farmer in North India then sort of raids the camp each night and they begin to hemorrhage jewels and gold even

before they've left India. But a lot of it makes it back. to Afghanistan. Nadia Shah rules from Herat, which is now, but just on the border between Iran and Afghanistan. And he puts this enormous loot in a castle called Kalat. And at the center of it, and he has a little exhibition. He shows it to his troops and his men. And anyone else who wants to come and see it, he actually puts on an exhibition of all the loot he's taken from India. And at the center of it are the Mughal thrones, not just the peacock throne, but three other thrones as well. And sitting there, and this is the point when Muhammad Marvi, the biographer of Nadia Shah,

the court chronicler says on the top of the peacock throat, there is the Coenor, the Mountain of Lyd. Now, there is, I mean, that's the history of it. But the fantasy of it, again, I'm just to tell you. It's a big story. Such a good story. So the other story that has been really predominant about the Coenor is that Rangelo, when Rangelo,

when Ranguilogholtically accepts this invitation from his would-be slaughterer, He hides the Kohenor in his turban because, you know, it's the safest place. I have no idea. Who would look at his turban? I mean, who'd look? So he goes to visit Nathosha. And Nathashah has been told by a concubine in common that, you know, pst, it's up there, it's up in his hat.

So when they meet Nathosha, according to this apocryphal story that has really dominated for centuries, that Natharh insists on doing the turban swap, which is a real thing. It's a real thing in India. It's in marriages as well. You have the two sides come together, and it's an act of respect here. You take mine.

I'll take yours. And apparently, according to the story, which is not true, but it is the story that has prevailed. He says, Rangila, welcome. Won't you take my turban? And Regula goes, oh, crap. No. Oh, oh.

And that's how the diamond passes. But anyway, Okay, so do you think this is a good place to pause it? So we now have their diamond. The most eddify. No, we now have the diamond. It is now with Nathasha. It is in Persian hands, but it's in Afghanistan.

And join us again to find out what happens. Does it do him any good, William? Just a sneak peek. Does it do him any? It possibly. Very definitely does not. Thank you very much for listening to our podcast. If you like what you've heard, there's more of that to come.

Lots more. There will be further blood, gall and chaos and anarchy coming soon.