Journey
Journey of Koh-i-Noor
One stone's route through six states: out of the Krishna gravels, into a Kakatiya treasury, north with a sultanate campaign, into the Mughal peacock throne, out with a Persian invader, on to Kabul, back to Lahore, and finally to London. At every stage it changed hands by conquest or extraction.
Stops (19)
- Koh-i-Noor · The stone itself
The large colourless diamond of Indian origin, 793 carats rough, cut and recut to 186 carats before Victoria's jewellers reduced it to the present 105.6-carat oval brilliant. It is a single physical object around which the fall of three dynasties and the end of Indian sovereignty can be told, which is why so many people who have never seen it feel strongly about where it should be.
- Kollur / Golconda diamond fields · Kollūr — the gravels
The alluvial diamond workings of the Krishna valley, the only significant source of large stones anywhere before Brazil in the 1720s, worked by licensed gangs under the sultan's officers. The Koh-i-Noor, the Hope, the Regent, the Darya-i-Noor and the Orlov all came out of this river country.
- Warangal Fort · Warangal — the first treasury
The Kakatiya capital, from whose treasury Khafi Khan says the stone went north when Alauddin Khalji's general Malik Kafur took the city in 1310 — the campaign that broke the dynasty and carried its wealth to Delhi. Nothing before this point in the stone's story is documented at all.
- Qutb complex, Delhi · Delhi — the sultanate
The Khalji and Tughlaq campaigns brought the Deccan's accumulated wealth to Delhi across the fourteenth century, and the Qutb complex's city is where it went. The stone disappears from view for two hundred years here, which is the ordinary condition of an object before it becomes famous.
- Agra Fort · Agra — into the Mughal throne
In 1526 the family of the defeated raja Bikramjit of Gwalior is said to have presented the stone to Humayun at Agra after Panipat — its first well-attested appearance. A century later Shah Jahan had it set in the Peacock Throne; Tavernier saw the throne in 1665 and described the stones upon it.
- Nāder Shāh · Nāder Shāh — and the name
He destroyed the Mughal army at Karnal in an afternoon in 1739, entered Delhi, ordered a massacre after a riot, and left with the Peacock Throne, this stone and enough treasure to suspend taxation in Persia for three years. He is also the man who, Marvi says, named it: koh-i-nūr, mountain of light.
- Karnal · Karnal, 1739 — the afternoon
A Mughal army several times larger was broken in about three hours by Persian mobile artillery and mounted musketry. The empire continued nominally for another century and never again controlled much beyond Delhi. The single event that empties the Mughal treasury is a battle that lasted an afternoon.
- Ahmad Shah Durrani · Ahmad Shāh Durrānī — the Afghan inheritance
Nader's Pashtun bodyguard commander acquired the stone after his master's assassination in 1747 and founded the Durrani empire with it, carrying it to Kandahar and then Kabul. For three generations the diamond stays with his dynasty through blindings, depositions and civil war until Shah Shuja carries it into exile.
- Kābul · Kābul — the Durrani interlude
After Nader's assassination the stone went to his Afghan general Ahmad Shah Durrani and stayed with his line at Kabul and Kandahar for two generations, through blindings, depositions and a civil war — until Shah Shuja carried it into exile in Punjab.
- Bala Hissar, Peshawar · Bala Hissar, Peshawar — the deposed king
The hilltop citadel of Peshawar where Shah Shuja Durrani was deposed and effectively held before fleeing east with his family in 1810. It was at the fort below the Khyber that Mountstuart Elphinstone's 1808 embassy had earlier recorded him wearing a bracelet set with the Koh-i-Noor and the Fakhraj — the first European eyewitness description of the stone on an identified wearer.
- Shah Shuja Durrani · Shāh Shuja Durrānī — exile with the stone
The deposed Durrani king arrived in Lahore in 1813 carrying the Koh-i-Noor on his person, having fled Peshawar through Kashmir, and surrendered it to Ranjit Singh in return for refuge and a pension. He was later restored briefly to Kabul by the British in the First Afghan War and killed there in 1842.
- Mahārāja Ranjīt Singh · Ranjīt Singh — the extraction
He had already given Shah Shuja refuge when he extracted the stone from him in 1813 as its price, and wore it on his arm at durbars. He willed it to Jagannatha at Puri; the Company's officers disregarded the will. His state survived him by ten years.
- Gobindgarh Fort · Gobindgarh Fort — the Toshakhana
The Sikh empire's treasury fort in Amritsar, inside whose Toshakhana vaults Ranjit Singh had the Koh-i-Noor kept for safekeeping, moved there under a decoy of thirty-nine camels so that no watcher on the Lahore-Amritsar road would know which beast carried the stone. The British took it from these vaults after annexation in 1849 before it travelled on to Lahore for the formal surrender.
- Lahore Fort & Shalimar · Lahore — the Sikh court
Ranjit Singh's capital, in the Mughal fort with the Picture Wall and the Shalimar gardens, and the centre of the one Indian state the Company treated as a serious military equal. The stone was surrendered here under Article III of the last Treaty of Lahore on 29 March 1849, placed in Dalhousie's waistcoat and sewn in overnight for the journey to Bombay.
- Gulab Singh · Gulāb Singh — the Dogra interregnum
In the chaos after Ranjit Singh's death in 1839 the Jammu Dogra Gulab Singh briefly held the stone during the Lahore court struggles; his later Treaty of Amritsar bargain in 1846 bought him Kashmir from the Company for seventy-five lakh rupees but the diamond had already passed to the minor Duleep Singh.
- Duleep Singh · Dulīp Singh — the surrender
The eleven-year-old last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire was made to sign Article III of the Treaty of Lahore on 29 March 1849 surrendering the stone to the Queen of England by name. Converted to Christianity, taken to England, he spent his later life trying unsuccessfully to recover his throne and his religion.
- Chillianwala · Chillianwala, 1849 — the annexation
A bloody draw in the Second Anglo-Sikh War — colours lost, guns abandoned, an outcry in London — followed by Gujrat and then annexation within months. The Treaty of Lahore required the eleven-year-old Duleep Singh to surrender the stone to the Queen of England by name.
- Queen Victoria · Queen Victoria — the presentation
The stone reached her hands at Buckingham Palace on 3 July 1850, the 250th anniversary of the East India Company's charter, delivered by John Lawrence and the deputy chairman of the Company. It disappointed London at the 1851 Great Exhibition under gaslight; the following year Prince Albert had it recut in Garrard's workshop by the Amsterdam cutter Voorzanger from 186 to 105.6 carats.
- Tower of London · The Tower of London
Set successively in the crowns of Alexandra (1902), Mary (1911) and the Queen Mother (1937), hidden in a biscuit tin in a Windsor Castle tunnel during the war, deliberately omitted from Camilla's 2023 coronation. India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan have all formally asked for it back; the answer has been the same each time.