Empire: World History - 9. The Curse of the Koh-i-Noor

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Intense paranoia, palatial looting, and murder. Join Anita and William as they discuss the bloody origins of The Curse of the Koh-i-Noor. Twitter: @EmpirePodUk 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 Durhampool. Now, we left you on a cliff edge. I know that. But just for those of you who weren't there for our first episode, We are in the midst of a story of what seems to be a little diamond, but actually is a story of empires, a story of many empires and how the symbol of power becomes this one diamond called the Coenor diamond.

So this is a story. If you've missed, go back and listen because we are taking you on a journey from prehistory, from mythology, from Hindu scripture. And we're going to take you all the way through the Mughal Empire, through the Persians, through Afghanistan, through. through the Sikh Empire, and we are going to plop you at the end on a cushion in the Tower of London. So that's our aim. That's what we're planning to do. So let's just go back to why this particular rock may be imbued with such supernatural powers. Because if you have heard of the Coenor, you might have heard that it is a cursed diamond. You might have heard that there is a saying about it that only a woman can wear it impunity.

and if a man wears it a mere human man, it will reduce him and his empire to dust. It is the reason that we don't have kings wearing it in this country. It has been worn by Queen Victoria, but then only by Queen Consorts, never by the reigning male monarch. I don't know, we sort of try to work out whether it's because spouses are dispensable. Whatever happens to them, it's fine next. But the story, perhaps, although as William says,

you know, there's so little factual evidence, But it could be because it is conflated with something called the Siamantica gem. So in Hinduism, there are texts, and those who are listening in India, forgive me, it's stuff that you know already. But in the piranhas, in the Vedas, there is a story about the sun god, Suria, who comes down to earth. He meets a king, a mortal king, who is dazzled, you can't see him, and says, look, you know, you're too bright, you're too shiny, I can't look at you.

Can you appear in a more reasonable form? So he, this god, Surya, the god, sun god, shrinks himself down into a stone or separates his brilliance into a stone, which is the Siamanticajem, and then the king can look upon him. And he gives him the stone. He says, you know what? The fact that you wanted to look at me, the fact that that was important, the fact you did it with such piety, here is the stone. You look after it. Well, this king, whose name was Satyjit, he then dies eventually, but happy. Nothing bad happens to him.

But he passes it on to his brother. And this is where this curse idea of the Siamantica, they become really joined, fused together. Because his brother goes on a little trip into the forest. You know, arguably not the cleverest thing in the world to go into a deep, dark forest with your most valuable gem around your neck. But he does. I mean, there are many, many bad choices made in the Commonwealth's life.

This is one of the first, potentially. But he goes in, and he's attacked by a lion who eats him. And the lion trots off with the... the Siamanticate in its mouth and is then attacked by the king of the bears who rips him to shreds and then William what happens It's a jolly tail. I mean this is you know

It's not it's not proving itself to be quite lucky so far and then after the bear king has it Then Krishna gets involved Krishna is accused of having stolen it When the stone disappears Yeah and for those of you in Britain who don't know Krishna is one of the pantheon of Hindu gods You'll see him he looks blue he plays a flute

Has peacock feathers in his And he's quite mischievous So it wasn't beyond reason that he could have been responsible for his disappearance. So he's sent off to prove his innocence and he has a big battle with the bear god

and gets the Siamanticua gives it to his father-in-law. Oh yes. And he's given a wife the owner's daughter and is married to Krishna. And then the father-in-law is killed by robbers who come and steal the gem and Krishna has to get it back a second time.

Many Hindus are brought up with these stories from childhood. And it's, you know, as much part of people's knowledge of myth as, you know, the stories of the shepherds and the stable in Beth, they're marty Christians. There is this belief in India that diamonds can be very, very unlucky. Yes. And that with a supreme hero, diamonds are okay, but that with a lesser mortal. So, Krishna, for example, would have been okay with the...

They were the naughty gems. I mean, the spinels and the rubies were the nice gems, but the diamonds are the naughty gems. This is problematic. And of course, you know, this may just reflect the reality that if you're wandering around with diamonds, people are quite likely at any period of history to knock you on the head and pitch them, whether it's the tube today or whether it's the jungles of Uttar Pradesh in centuries BC. Now, we were previously on this conversation, previously on this conversation, William, we had left these fine people in Kalat.

The year is 1740-ish. Calat is on the border of Afghanistan and Iran. and the diamond has been taken from poor old hapless, Mohammed Shah Rangila, poor Mohammed Shah Ranghila, who is an Egypt, but is a sweet Egypt, but isn't Egypt? And it has now gone to Nader Shah, who is a much more austere person. It's still, though, isn't it, on the peacock throne? It's still the head of the peacock of the peacock throne.

So the Kohino is sitting on top of the peacock, on the top of the peacock throne. And it's sitting between Afghanistan and Iran, Nader Shah is the new power on the king. block. He's knocked out the Mogul Empire, which has been the biggest power for nearly two centuries. And having taken all the wealth away, it's like extinguishing the boiler of the Mogul Empire. You could imagine taking a mirror and throwing it out a third-story window. It hits the ground. It smashes into a million parts. That's what happens to India at this point. Every small town,

Jodhpur, Jaipur, Hyder, Hyderabad, Delhi, Agra, Tangor, and so on, becomes effectively an independent city-state. Meanwhile, the big empire is to the north. Nadeeshire is sitting in Kalat. And in this one fortress, he has the entire loot that the moguls gathered over two centuries from all of India. It's just sitting in one fort in boxes. And one of the first things he does is he takes the Kohinor off the peacock throne, off the head of the peacock. And he straps it to something called a Bazubund, which is like an armlet. And he wears it as a sort of double act.

On his left hand, he has the Kohinor. on the right, the Timor Ruby. And so for him, these two stones, one red, one gorgeously brilliant diamond, are sitting there flashing on either round, the symbol of his conquest. Because the Timor diamond is a kind of Persian stone. Sure. And the Coenor is the ultimate Indian stone. But there's something entirely masculine about this.

At the time, you know, it's not that women wore jewelry. These are rocks of conquest sitting on the bicep of a man who wants to flex. It is the ultimate flex. And that's what these huge gems represented in those days. They wouldn't have been worn by women. They would have been worn by men. They're symbols of sovereignty. Women did wear jewels, but these kind of jewels, the mega fauna of jewels, is worn by men and it's worn by kings.

And in India, in fact, we didn't say this earlier, but it's a very important point. In the early Indian courts, you have a strict hierarchy of what gems, what rank of person can wear. So, you know, if you're an accountant, even if you're a rich accountant, you're not allowed to wear a diamond in public. No, you wear a pearl. but that's fine. You can't wear anything else. And it's strictly tied to your rank. And often in courts, people were almost nothing except stones.

And they were an indication of your rank and who you were and what you were. So when you sit there, like Nardeshire with the Timor Ruby, the greatest of all rubies on one arm and the Koenor, one of the largest diamonds on the other, it's a statement. It's a statement of like, come on over here if you think you're hard enough. I mean, to put it in modern parlors, It is a sandwich board of strength,

which is these are the empires that have fallen before me. And for a long time, no one is strong enough to come up. Nadishar, having seen off the moguls, goes around Central Asia and Iran, seeing off, he takes on the Russians, he takes on the Ottoman Turks, the two great powers of the day, does very well against both,

extends his empire down to Baghdad, and in the end he's brought down not by any of his foreign enemies, but by his own clan because he's become basically a psycho. He's nuts. I mean, this is not overstating the point. He is, um, so we were talking about this, this so-called cursed notion of the Coenor that it corrupts. And no man is fit to wear it. You know, that's the ancient curse is supposed to say.

But this is a man who's a very capable leader who commands great respect, who suddenly becomes a paranoid maniac, who starts looking at those people who are loyal to him, who have done nothing wrong, even if they are blood relatives and all he sees his enemies everywhere. And he literally, you know, this is used as a sort of phrase, but he builds pyramids of skulls. He genuinely builds pyramids of scars

of his enemies all over Central Asia. You know, he moulds them into nice pyramid shapes. It makes you miss Rangelo more, doesn't it really? And when the moment I think when everyone realizes that he's totally lost it is when there's an assassination attempt and a bullet hits the saddle of his horse. And one bullet hits the saddle.

and one bullet hits the horse and the horse dies, but he's fine. But after this, he's constantly looking for who are his traitors, who've taken a portrait at him. And he assumes wrongly that it's his son. And he has his son blinded and has his son's eyes brought to him on a platter. So this is so, again, I mean, we talk about these things being Games of Thrones, but I think there are lots of stories from the actual Coenor history that have informed the folklore in Game of Thrones.

I mean, I'm absolutely certain of it. We're coming up to one of the big one. We're going to come to a classic tree. But this is a man who, so did he watch his son being eye gouged? No, he gave the orders. But then I think he did ask for the eyes to be brought to him. Bring me the eyeballs of my son. And his son had done, to what are not?

We now know. His son had done nothing at all. He wasn't responsible assassination attempt. Wow. And this is the thing that sends him over the edge. Because when the eyeballs are brought to him on a plate, he looks at them. Then he bursts into tears. Yes, because his eyeballs are looking up, going, Papa.

It's awful. And he says, what is a father? What is a son? Yeah, well, not bad. Not ideally. I think we can safely say not bad. But he gets his, doesn't he? Because, so he's a middle-aged man at this point.

So he's a mid-aged man. He's conquered the greatest. He's taken on in battle. Not one, but three of the great-enfires at this time. Is he a happy man? Well, whether he's happy or not, his family are definitely not happy. As you could imagine, if he's going around blinding them. And eventually there is a plot to do him in.

And one night he is in his test. when his cousin's storming and he's in bed with a concubine and they take a slash at him and I think they cut off one hand and he fights on with the other hand and a sword and he puts up a very decent last resistance in his tent

before he's cut down by all his enemies. Okay. There then erupts the greatest night of mayhem in Persian history because the whole army hears that he's been killed and they go for the jewels. the 8,000 wagons of mogul loot are still sitting in crates or dotted around the treasuries.

Yeah, why wouldn't you? And no one is guarding it. No one's guarding it. It's a complete power vacuum. It's chaos. And particularly, obviously, they go for the peacock throne. The peacock throne is sitting there. The man who sat in it is now dead.

And so all these soldiers are going at it with their bare nets or their knives. Just hacking it to pieces. And there's actually an eyewitness account. A Scottish traveller called James Bailey Fraser interviews as an old man, one of the men who was a young man, was there with a knife prizing pearls out of the peacock throne. And there's murder, there's mayhem. But while all this is going on, the head of the bodyguard,

who's a man called Ahmed Khan Durani. And Ahmed Khan has been implored by the chief wife of Nada, who's a very clever cookie called Chuky. Chuky says, protect me this one night. protect me and my women, and I will give you the Kohinor. So the Kohinor, which presumably was on a buzzubun, maybe he took it off when he went to sleep. But she would know where it is.

And it's very plausible, isn't it? She's got it. And this sounds, we have this from two or three sources, so it's not nonsense. And it's entirely plausible that a woman who now has no longer got the protection of her husband is going to be seen as loot. It's going to be, I mean, the way in which, and it's still, unfortunately, the way of the world today, but rape is used as a weapon of conquest. Christina Lam's done this wonderful book.

Excellent book about it. Yeah. So Chuki is quite clever to say, look, I will give you the most valuable gem and take it, but you've got to save my life. And Ahmed Shah Durrani is a man who owes everything to Nadia Shah. He was, when Nadishah first entered Afghanistan on his way to Delhi, Amishadurani is in prison in Kandah, allegedly for pickpocketing. Wow. And Nader gets him out, realizes his qualities.

promotes him and he's now the head of the bodyguard and on this occasion he's failed to protect Nanda but he protects the women and in the morning when this after this night of May you can just imagine it that all these soldiers hacking at these boxes which is sort of blood and I mean I sort of see blood and gems skittering across the floor

literally that's the case all by the light of flares and you know bonfires and things going up in flames and in the morning having formed a ring one imagines maybe around the harrim or however they don't they protected the women they ride off with them to Kandahar and with them they have the Kauinor diamond

and then they have a stroke of luck because on their way just before they reach Kandahar they meet the salary train all the money that's going to pay the soldiers who are still rioting and running a mock falls into the hands of Amish Hydron so as well as having the Koi Norn and a handful of gems that he's taken from the tent

he actually has the entire year's pay of the army and this wasn't planned this was a this was a strode for him. But these two things basically act as the capital, which he then sits down in Kandahar and brings together the chiefs of what we now call Afghanistan and forms for the first time a country in Afghanistan. Right. Now we should at this point say that we do have a very good idea of what the diamond look like because. So we've mentioned that the thing in the Tower of London is much smaller and it is entirely transformed from what it was at beginning and at the time that Durrani has it, I mean you've said before, I think it's a really

excellent description. It's like Arthur's seat, isn't it? It's very flat on the top. Big dome on top and it goes down to these kind of small tail if you like. It's shaped like a tadpole. It is shaped like a tadpole and it's got these sort of like great sort of they're crudely slashed sides if you like. You know, there's slopes like big ski slopes. But it's enormous. It's big. It's huge. It's a duck egg. I mean what what is the carrot is? I always lose count of the carrots. on this. From memory 250 carous. Yeah, 276 is the number that sticks in my head as well. That is huge. I mean, if you think that, you know, most people have one-carat diamonds if they're very, very lucky.

276 carrots in this rock. This is a crucial moment. So we've seen how it was possibly part of ancient India. We don't know for sure. It's certainly a part of Mogul India. It's moved to Nadia Shah, which is a whole new empire. And now we're at the beginning of another chapter, which is the creation of Afghanistan. And in the week that follows the assassination of Nade Nashaan and hacking a part of the peacock throne. Amishadurani using the Kohinur as collateral effectively, he summons all the chiefs of what will become Afghanistan. Afghanistan up to this point has been part of other empires. It's been part of the Safavid Empire, a bit of the Mughal Empire, a bit of the Uzbek empire and so on. But for the first time, you get a state which forms with roughly the borders of modern Afghanistan. And

Fun enough, this was in the news, this day was in the news last year, because when the Taliban seized the arc, the palace of the Afghan president where Hamid Khazai had ruled from and Ashrafgani, there was a famous picture that was in every news, front page of every newspaper in the world of them sitting on Ashrafgani's desk. Now, behind that desk was a photograph of this moment. Yeah. Behind this desk was a picture of this moment, a painting of a Sufi giving Ahmad Shah the, the right to rule Afghanistan, giving him his blessing. And this is the moment that the Afghan state is founded. So this is why, as well as being the diamond for many Indians, it's also the diamond for many Iranians because of Nadisha, and the diamond for Afghans, because it's there at the moment the Afghan state is started.

Okay, so this explains why always the emotions of fever pitch whenever we've toured with this talk. I mean, we have literally, we've done a Facebook talk, William and I, which started off on one timeline. We were talking to India, then Pakistan joined in. So India has one, our diamond,

give us back our diamond. You British give us back our diamond. Then the Pakistanis came in saying, our diamond, it was from Lahore. Then Afghanistan joined it. Then the Iranians pitched in. And it was quite the free-for-all. So look, so does it make him happy?

I'm a share of all the people that have the Kau-in-Nor, Well, actually there's several people that have incredibly gruesome beds because of the Coindore. But Abishah is one of them. He then conquers quite a lot of Nadasha's territory. He conquers quite a lot of India. But even as he's getting kings and nobles to submit to him around the whole region, his face is being eaten up by a cancer. And at some stage, he decides it's so revolting that he has to cover it,

like Robocop, one of those movies. He covers it with a sheath of silver studded with many of the greatest. Like a Phantom of the Opera kind of thing. But even that doesn't do the job because apparently according to one eyewitness account, maggots dropping out from underneath. I do know why I'm laughing. I do know. I don't, listen, I'm not a psychopath, it's not that I find maggots dropping out of this man's face.

I'm just thinking back to when we wrote the book together because this is all, you know, stories are all contained in the book that we wrote. And meanwhile, we shouldn't forget, you mentioned Game of Thrones. Meanwhile, the Persians are still looking for the Koie Doak. We know that it's gone off with Amishar Durani, and he's got it in Kandahar, but the various contenders for the Persian throne, who are still slugging it out on the Persian border. And one of the people that rise to the top is a former eunuch of Nadasha.

And he is busy trying to find the diamond. And he calls in one of Nardashar's children. And basically he straps him to a chair and tortures him because he's convinced that he has it. And he has many other gems, but he doesn't have the going all because it's with Amishar Durrani. And when finally, having extracted these other gems, but failed to get the Koenor and convinced himself that this man is hiding the great secret, he ties him to a chair and he gets his men to make a crown of paste, which he puts in. And he then pours molten gold over the head of the son of Nadia. Which is a direct scene from Game of Thrones. Yeah.

So, okay, so the reason I need to explain why I was laughing. I feel that I need to. This is the whole new side of your character. It's like some kind of witchy cackle in the background. It is because I started telling you a story. But then quite rightly, there was more gaudical. William and I competed against each other. We started calling it gore wars.

You definitely won. We were not even there yet. We're not even to my bit yet. But it was, I mean, it was quite something. So William would be in India suddenly pop up on my phone and say, I just found this thing. You were sitting down. Magots out of his face.

And I go, I'll see your maggots. And I will raise you. I won't tell you what I'm going to raise you because that's coming up in a bit. But yes, okay. So, Maggot says. So, Amishad Durrani, one of the big battles he fights famous to everyone in India, 1761, he fights the battle in Panipat. He defeats the Maraths.

The Marathas look as if they're going to take over the entire Indian subcontinent. And suddenly we're going to have Hindu rulers ruling India again. It doesn't happen because in 1761, Amishadurani massacres the entire Maratat army who fight very bravely, but hopelessly against the swivel guns of Amishar Durrani. And not only does he have this horrible end, but he leaves chaos for his sons. So his successor is a man called Timosha,

who rather unhelpfully for a man wanting to conquer the world as a dwarf. Teeny tiny Timorah. Teeny tiny Timorshaw. I like to think of it. Having got a lot of these jewels, then makes himself an enormous jewelled, sort of step ladder to get onto a horse maybe extracted from the former mask,

a jeweled mask of his father. And he rules a fraction of the empire that his father ruled. And then you get his son, who's a guy called Sharsha Jha Mulk, who I wrote an entire book about called Return of a King, which maybe we'll come back to the future episode.

We must do the whole episode of that because it is fabulous. That book is fabulous. But just in a nutshell, Sharshajha, you have very unkindly. and I can see why you do it. But there are pictures of Shashuja and you have described invariously as Gimli. He does look like Gimli, the dwarf,

in order to the ring. Okay. So what is the personality? I mean, there is a parallel in modern Indian politics to the decline of a great dynasty, you know, from Neru to Dera to Rajiv to Rahul. Okay. Well, you may say that.

I couldn't possibly comment. But just so tell us about, so Shashuja, apart from looking a little bit like, He should be hacking away at a mountainside. What is his personality? So Shah Shuja is actually a remarkable guy. And remind us what era we're talking here. So we're now talking, I suppose, 1800.

And his elder brother has briefly become the Shah. And instantly everyone turns on him. And he is imprisoned in a small fortress at the top of the Kaibaba Pass. He gets caught in a blizzard and he comes into this border fortress and asks for shelter. And now, you know, just it's only 20. years since his father who ruled the entire region was the all-powerful guy. But now so much anarchy has broken out, so much chaos that when he goes in to take shelter, the Shinwari tribe capture him and he hides the Kohinor in a crack in his prison cell. Yeah, wonderful. And I think

previous to this, knowing that things were a bit dodgy, he hid the Timor Ruby under a rock where he'd gone for his ablutions. In a river. Yeah, just under a rock and in a river. And so the two greatest champions in the world. One's in a prison cell and one's in a river at this point. So Sharshuj's brother, Shazamun, has secreted the Kohinor in a crack in his present cell. He's earlier hidden the Timor Ruby in a rock. Under a rock. Under a rock. In a river. That's right. Okay. And when his, when Shashuja comes into power and avenge him, the first thing he does is to send out search parties looking for these two stones. And one, the Kohinor is found.

on a Muller's desk as a paperweight being used to keep the sermons from blowing away. So this is Morvi does not have a clue. Morvi hasn't got a clue. Morvi's a pious old man, doesn't know what he's got. And he's just literally using his paperweight on his desk. And meanwhile, the Tim or Ruby has been found by a young student who went bathing. And that's also retrieved. So Frasicja gets his two stones back.

But again, everything goes badly wrong. He forms an alliance with the new power on the block, which is the East India Company, but it's too late to save him. And he shortly ends up in a prison cell in Kashmir. His wife, who's a remarkable woman called Wafa Begham, then goes to the other new power on the block who is the head of the Sikhs, Ranjit Singh. So we've just had an introduction to the Sikh Empire,

the British Empire. Do you know what? Let's take a break. So just before the break, we had introduced Ranjit Singh, who is quite a character, particularly in the organ of work. He's a figure that every, Every Sikh knows backwards, but lots of people, I think, won't.

So, I mean, ethnically, I'm Punjabi, and that Punjab is a place in the north of India. Renjit Singh was a baron, a misseldhar. So he is supposedly, you know, quite a, quite, it's a noble, but not really that noble. He is brave, though. So at the time that all those shenanigans are going on with people gouging out each other's eyes, this is a man who's born in 1780. So by 1800, it's a young man, we estimate, you know, nobody really wrote down dates properly. in those days. But as a young man, he rides out from his village across the north of India,

and he starts to conquer everything in his path. He starts conquering, first of all, small villages, then bigger cities, then Lahore itself. And he starts to unite these people, much as Amishar did in Afghanistan, these different tribes and missiles together into one kingdom, which becomes the Sikh Empire. Shazaman, the man who hid the Kohinor in his prison cell. When he's leaving Lahore, he asks Ranjit Singh to help him get his cannons out of the mud. Exactly. So this is a man who has now got power and authority. Not only that, he shows the Indians, the Indian side of the mountain range, that we can keep the Afghans out. So almost immediately that he draws this dotted line around his empire. Before that, the Afghans would regularly just come over

the mountains, raid, take whatever they want. Come down. Raid in India. Go back. So it's murder, go back. Rape disappear. But he says no more. This is not going to happen anymore in my kingdom. And he unifies a really very wealthy part of the world. So even today, the north of India, Punjab is known as the breadbasket of India because it has the fields.

It has the irrigation. It's called Punjab is the land of the five rivers. So it's one of the most irrigated places in India. And even to this day produces the majority of wheat, for example, in all of Asia. So there's Ranjit Singh. The Wafa Begum, the lady that you've just referred to, who is desperate to get Sharshajha out of Klingk, goes and appeals to the man the enemy across the border, who is Ranjit Singh, and says, listen, you've got to get him out, get him out, get him out, get him out. And he says, why should I quite reasonably?

What's in it for me? And the Wafa Begum says, I will give you the Coen-Or diamond. And he says, well, what's that worth? And she famously gives this wonderful analogy that if you throw a rock, up into the air as high as you can, and then throw it to the left as hard as you can, and then throw it to the right as hard as you can, and fill that entire space with gold. That is the value of the Coenor diamond.

And in fact, it's quite significant that she has to explain this, because at this point the Coenor is not the big famous stone that it is now. And also, he's not a man who cares about jewels. I mean, also, you know, the character of this man, Ranjit Singh, unlike the Mughals, who liked to wear their wealth, He comes from the Sikh faith, which is comparatively new in India, and they are like the Protestants. They've come in, they're not for idolatry, they're not for big temples, they're not for showy-showness. He himself just wears white clothes.

He doesn't sit on his own throne. He has something called the Golden Gaddi, which is a golden throne, but he doesn't sit on it. He leaves it empty for Gurinanuk, who's the spiritual leader of the Sikh tradition. So he's not really that bothered, but he's bothered about this one, because this one. because this one is the stone of power. And in due course, and this is why he's important to our story, he's the guy, he wears it on his own. All the others like Nadia Shah and Amidha Durrani

had worn it along with the Timorribi. So Ruffer Begham promises him this rock, and he says, all right, I will help. And he does, doesn't he? I mean, he does go and help. Well, he invades Kashmir and takes Kashmir. So he adds Kashmir to his kingdom. And springs Shashoja from prison.

So he's brought back to Lahore. and they then sit down and they face each other. And Rajat Singh says, so where's the diamond? So where's the diamond? You promised me the diamond. And Sharsha-shuja says famously, in diplomacy, this happens a lot. Diamond, what diamond? I don't know what you're talking about. And he says, your wife, your wife told me, if I sent men and spilled blood and coin to get you out of there, you'd give me the diamond.

And he says, don't know anything about that, governor. Sorry, no idea. So Ranjit Singh, according to Sharshaegas' memoir, this is something which is something which, Interesting. Yeah, yeah. It's something which is not in the Sikh sources, obviously, which Shachouda very much puts into his own memoirs. He says that he gets Sharshuda's son and tortures him.

In front of his father's. Until he hands over the damage. And the Sikh sources say he convinces him. He convinces him. And actually, a deal is a deal and he should hand it over. This stone is not something that brings out the best at anyone at any point in history. Really not. Really not.

So the diamond is handed over finally. There's this very uncomfortable meeting at a place as Mubarakhaveli which is still I've been to it in Lahore where Shashuja's been lodged and they sit, the two men sit facing each other in silence for 20 minutes until eventually Rajit Singh makes a sort of gesture saying where the hell is this time? Yeah, enough now.

And Shashuja flicks his fingers and gets a eunuch to bring a dirty cloth and it's placed in the middle of the room. I love that detail of it being in a dirty cloth, just shows the dissent of I, you know, I'm handing it over, but I'm handing it all the ill will. He just puts it in the middle and Red Singh has to reach forward and pick it up. So what's, what happens next is really, I think, very significant because here is, here is a man. Now, just to describe Ranjit Singh for you at this time, he looks older than he is. He's got a white beard.

If you look at sort of court paintings from the time, he's only got one eye because he's had chartered smallpox, we think, that has robbed him of the vision of one eye. He walks with a limp. He's got a pockmarked face. he's not beautiful. But he loves to surround himself with incredibly beautiful courtches to almost compensate for this.

Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, but he takes the diamond, as you say, and he wears it on its own, on his arm. And at this point, you know, this diamond is now really saddled with the reputation that it brings down empires, it brings down strong men. And the way he wears it is almost as if he's thumbing his nose

at all powers, temporal and supernatural. He wears just very simple white pajamas with this one stone on his arm. And this is the point that it first enters the... Your British notice. The British notice. Yeah, the little glint of the diamond catches their eye. And from this period, you get the first references in British sources to this amazing diamond.

And anyone that goes to see Ranjit Singh hopes to see it. Well, he shows it. I mean, the thing about this diamond with him is that wherever he goes in his kingdom in the north, you know, people talk about King of the North and keep coming to gay with friends. I'm not obsessed. But it's just, you know, he's the real deal. So whenever he tours around, he takes him. his diamond with him. It's like, you know, it's the thing that everybody turns out to come and see.

The way in which he transports and protects the diamond is also extraordinary. So his master of the Toshahana, the treasury is a man called Belyram, Misir Belyram. And Beli Ramb is charged with protecting the stone. Protecting the stone as if it's a member of the royal family, it's that serious. So the diamond goes out behind Ranjit Singh in a caravan of sometimes, you know, their descriptions of 40 camels following. Each with identical panes. is. Everything looks the same. Both, all the baskets on all the camels look identical, but only one of them has the Coenor in it, and only Bellyram in the entire kingdom knows which one it is. When he sleeps, he has it and other baskets chained to him, his body, so that if somebody comes,

they're going to have to rifle through numerous baskets to try and find, where's Wally? Where is the diamond? And in the meantime, he can spring up and slit their throats. So, you know, this is a man who has perhaps the most onerous task. But Renjit Singh, when, Wherever he holds his der bars or his governmental meetings, he makes sure he has this, this diamond strapped to his bice up against the absolute epitome of masculinity. And sometimes it's just kept in, is it called Govengar, the imperial fortress treasury, which Ranjit Singh puts all his treasure in. And it's still there. It's an incredible sort of blockhouse. And it's the strongest place in the realm. So just to sort of give a picture of what's happening at this point. So by now, the East India, And early 1800s, just remind people I'm talking early 1800s.

By now, the East India Company, which is a commercial company. It's not the British government. It's a public limited company. It's got shareholders. It's got a board of directors. And it's run out of a relatively small office in the city of London. Leavenhall Street. Leden Hall Street.

Yeah. And through, in the chaos which followed the claps of the Mughal Empire, which itself followed the fact that Nadia Shah had taken all the money away. And there was no money left to pay the soldiers, the civil servants. the East India company, a corporation, has gobbled up the whole of India, and it's done it in the most sort of bizarre way. There are only, at the time of the Battle of Plessy, which is the first big battle when the company really gets going, at that point, there are only 35 employees in the head office in Leavenhall Street, which itself is only five windows wide. It's a tiny building.

And in India, there are only 250 white civil servants. But what they do is that they borrow money from the Indian bankers, particularly the most. Marwari Jains, and of all of them a group called the Jugget Sets. And the Juggot sets and the other bankers realize that these guys actually speak the same language of them. Although one are beef-eating Englishmen and the others are vegetarian Indians, they understand the business of interest rates, commercial contracts, and they may loot, they may plunder, they may do all sorts of a normatism.

But they do a capital return. They do a capital return on time in full, and they don't argue, while often Indian rulers hang up bankers by their feet and if they ask the money back. So these guys say they may be awful, they may be awful, they may. may be foreigners, they may be heath. But we can literally do business with these guys. But we can do business with them. And they provide the capital with which the East India Company buys an Indian army. So they recruit sepoys who are Indian soldiers, train them up as mercenaries. And by the time that the Coenor is back with Ranjit Singh, the East Indy company, private army in

India is 200,000 strong when the British army is only 100,000. It's a private company in an office in London, controls an army twice the size of the British island. And if you look at sort of Indian sources at the time, they describe these armies of the East India Company as just sweeping across the land like locust, just taking everything in their path. And that's what they've done. They've now controlled the whole, either directly through conquest or by alliance. They control all of India south of the Sutland River.

But they can't go north of the river. Because Ranjit Singh is sitting there. He won't let them. And he also, so the Sikhs are a martial race. It's part of their identity. that you are a man you must fight. So just a little bit of background on seats. This is your in-laws.

Well, my in-laws, indeed. So Hinduism has a caste system, as most of you will know. But when the Sikhs come along, and I describe those sort of that, India's Protestants, they say enough of this. We're not going to have caste division anymore. Everybody will be reborn the same. So whatever you were before, now your surname will be Singh. If you are a man, Singh means a lion.

And if you are a woman, you will be core, which means every woman is a princess. So in one foul swoop, that's it, the end of caste. They also say you will be a warrior saint. So that means you will be pious, but you must fight. You must learn how to fight. So that's also sort of part of the very nature of being a Sikh. And that's for men and women, which is interesting. And one of the things that had allowed the East India Company to defeat all these Indian armies so quickly

is the fact that there's been a military revolution in Europe. You have horse artillery, muskets, ban, all this stuff. And using this new technology, the East India company, just 50 years, has taken over the whole of India. One office in London takes over the richest country in the world. India is producing about 40% of the world's GDP at this point. And they've been taken over by the East India company because of this technique. What does Ranjit Singh do? He may have the most macho warriors in North India, but he needs the technology.

And so what he does is he gets Napoleon's generals. Right. And a whole load of ex-Napologianic soldiers and officers to train his army. I mean, his armies felt stuffed full of European mercenaries. So we have all these strange men like sort of General Avetabali, who is an ex-Nopolitan general shipped over from Sicily to run Peshawar. What is the name of the tartan general? Alexander Gardner.

Alex Arden Gardner, who will figure large in a while in this story. He will. He is literally, he wears a tartan salver commies. And a tartan turban. I've seen pictures of a tartan turban on him as well. So there we are. So Ranjit Singh is able to repel. Oh, actually, they don't even try.

They don't even try it across the Stelidge. because they know if they do, they'll be massacred. And particularly the artillery is extraordinary. He builds up this amazing, rather like the Russians today in Ukraine, they have a massive artillery advantage. And Ranjitz Singh starts these artillery factories in Lahore. And so the British know that if they try and cross the Sutledge, they're going to be met by this hail of lead.

So from sort of around 1800 to 1839, this is a man who has unassailable power in the north. Nobody can challenge him, cross him. no one does. It doesn't mean they haven't got their eye on it, especially the British have got their eye on it. And also, interestingly, they don't just have an eye on his kingdom, but they also have an eye on the diamond. Because the diamond, they recognise that propaganda value of that means power, that means power to all Indians. I mentioned earlier this guy, James Bailey Fraser, who's actually my wife's ancestor. He has a brother called William Fraser. William Fraser leaves probably the first report about the co-in-law of any British letter writer.

the East Indic Company sends a mission to Shahuju just before he's toppled and they see Shashuja wear the Kohinor in Peshawar. And from that point, everyone who turns up at the Punjab is reporting on this diamond. And the Brits are longing to get their hands on the Punjab and they're longing to get their hands on the diamond, but they can't because of all this attorney. They basically have to wait until Rajat Singh gets old and dies. I mean, even when he's old and infirm, they still don't.

But when he dies in 1839, that's their chance. And that might be actually a good place to leave it. Thanks very much for listening to Empire. We're going to be back with more murder, mayhem, the rise and fall of great empires. So do join us again. Goodbye for me, William Durhampool. Goodbye for me, Anita Arna.