Journey

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier — six voyages for stones (1630–68)

Stops (8)

1. Paris · home · Paris

   A Paris goldsmith's son who learned to assess stones before he learned the road, and made six voyages to Asia over nearly forty years as a working gem merchant rather than an envoy. The Six Voyages appeared in 1676 and gave Europe most of what it thought it knew about Mughal India for a century.

2. Isfahan · Isfahan, every time

   Shah ʿAbbās's capital, where European travellers to India routinely wintered and where he did business on every one of the six voyages. The Armenian merchants of New Julfa in the city ran a credit network reaching Surat, Madras and Manila, and much of the European trade to India was financed on Isfahan paper before it was financed on London paper.

3. Surat · Surat, the landfall

   Surat, the Mughal empire's great western port and the usual European landfall, where he changed money and joined the caravans inland. He describes the customs house search, the brokers, the bullion he had to bring because Indian sellers wanted coin, and the exchange rates — which is what makes the book useful.

4. Agra Fort · Agra and the Peacock Throne

   Agra, for the court and the jewel market; he was one of the very few Europeans to describe the Peacock Throne and left a valuation of its stones, which is the only figure anyone has. The throne was carried off to Persia by Nader Shah seventy years later and broken up.

5. Red Fort, Delhi · Delhi, received by Aurangzeb

   Delhi, where he was received by Aurangzeb — the Red Fort court in the years when the Mughal treasury was still the richest in the world. He was ennobled in France on the strength of what he brought back, and sold Louis XIV the blue diamond that became the Hope, which was stolen in the Revolution, recut, and is now in the Smithsonian.

6. Golconda · Golconda, the market

   Golconda, capital of the Qutb Shahs and the clearing-house through which every Indian diamond passed before sale. He describes the market's rules, the brokers' hand signals under a cloth, the state's levy on every stone above a certain weight, and that the trade ran on credit notes rather than coin.

7. Kollur / Golconda diamond fields · Kollur, sixty thousand diggers

   The Kollur workings on the Krishna — he says sixty thousand people were digging there, the only estimate of the workforce anyone recorded, and describes the washing, sorting and the merchants' habit of concealing stones. Before Brazil in the 1720s, effectively every large diamond in the world came out of these gravels.

8. Machilipatnam / Masulipatnam / Bandar · Masulipatnam

   Masulipatnam on the Coromandel, the export port for painted cottons and the outlet for the Golconda trade, with Dutch, English and French factories working side by side and buying the same cloth for different markets. The roadstead was so shallow that cargo had to be lightered out to ships at anchor.