The Journey of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond

The Koh-i-Noor diamond entered written history in 1628, when the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, commissioned a new, jewel-encrusted throne, to be modeled after the throne of King Solomon. The throne, which took seven years to complete and cost four times as much as the Taj Mahal (commissioned by Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife), eventually became known as the Peacock Throne, after the jewel-encrusted peacock (or peacocks) that sat atop its gold canopy. While the gem-laden throne has long since been lost to history, we know that the Koh-i-Noor diamond was literally its crowning jewel.

When invading Persians, led by the notorious Nader Shah, sacked Delhi in 1739, marking the beginning of the end of the Mughal empire, Nader left the city with a staggering windfall of looted treasure—which required a caravan of seven hundred elephants, four thousand camels, and twelve thousand horses to transport it home—including the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-Noor diamond. The diamond, now set in an armband and rumored to be cursed, passed from ruler to ruler over the course of seven bloody decades, until 1812, when its current owner, Shah Shuja Durrani, was imprisoned by his half-brother in a power play for the Afghan throne.

Shuja's wife, Wafa Begum, fled to Lahore and sought help from Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who agreed to free Shuja in exchange for the diamond. Ranjit also had imperial designs on Kashmir, where Shuja was being held. When Fateh Khan, another half-brother of Shuja who was scheming for control of the Afghan empire, proposed that the Sikhs join forces with his army to invade Kashmir in return for a share of the plunder, Ranjit agreed to send one of his top generals, Dewan Mokham Chand, to lead a Sikh contingent to Kashmir. But Fateh Khan double-crossed the Sikhs and rode off with all spoils, and when Chand’s men took Shuja back to Lahore, Ranjit found that he was no more eager to surrender his famed diamond than Fateh Khan had been to share Kashmir’s treasure. Shuja stalled for over a year, until Ranjit changed Shuja’s status from royal guest to prisoner. In June of 1813, Shuja finally handed over the Koh-i-Noor in an elaborate ceremony.

On Ranjit’s arm, the Koh-i-Noor had become one of the world’s most famous diamonds, its facets reflecting the power he had amassed, the lands he had conquered, the empire he had built. As all of Punjab fell under the shadow of the East India Company in 1849, Duleep Singh, the deposed eleven-year-old maharaja, was forced to surrender his father’s prized possession to Queen Victoria. The British empire had an official ceremony orchestrated by the governor-general of India “in token of [Duleep’s] submission” to the queen, an eerie echo of the moment when Shah Shuja finally surrendered the Koh-i-Noor to Ranjit and the Sikh empire. The Koh-i-Noor was displayed in London at the Great Exhibition of 1851; it was then recut and set in a brooch for Queen Victoria.

The last maharaja of the Sikh empire was exiled to England, where he was educated, endowed with a pension, and befriended by the queen. He converted to Christianity and lived as a British aristocrat. In 1860, when Duleep was twenty-two, he persuaded the British government to let his mother (the exiled former Maharani and regent of the Sikh Empire), Jind Kaur, join him. The fire had long left her, and she died a few years later, a blind, broken woman at only forty-six. But the brief time Jind Kaur was able to spend with her son at the end of her life had a profound effect on Duleep, who renounced Christianity and reclaimed his Sikh faith. He made several attempts to travel back to Punjab but was thwarted by the British each time. Disillusioned and bitter, he settled in Paris, where he died in 1893.

Queen Victoria died eight years later, and the Koh-i-Noor was set in a crown for the coronation of Queen Alexandra, wife of King Edward VII. Ten years later, it was moved to the crown of Queen Mary for her coronation. In 1937, the Koh-i-Noor was reset atop the crown of Elizabeth the Queen Mother, where it remains today, a glittering token of the distant lands and people that were added to the British treasury like so many spoils of war.