Person · French gem merchant and traveller
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier
Also known as Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Baron d'Aubonne, John Baptista Tavernier
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689) was a Paris-born Huguenot gem merchant who made six voyages to Persia and India between 1630 and 1668 and published them as Les Six Voyages (1676). He visited the Kollur diamond workings of Golconda, sold jewels to Aurangzeb and handled the Mughal treasury's great stones, and sold Louis XIV the blue diamond later recut as the Hope. Historians distrust his chronology, but his gemmological observations are considered reliable.
- Date
- 1605 – 1689
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
Valentine Ball, the geologist who rediscovered the forgotten site of the Kollur mine in the 1880s, also translated Tavernier's Indian travels and noted that ruined houses and mine workings could still be seen there.
Tavernier is regarded as among the least reliable describers of the Peacock Throne, and his chronology is confused because he merged notes from different journeys. The story that he was torn apart by wild dogs under a diamond curse is a myth; he died in Moscow in 1689.
Connections (6)
- Historical linkFrancois Bernier
Bernier met Jean-Baptiste Tavernier in Bengal after his return from Kashmir: two Frenchmen at Aurangzeb's court in the same decade, one a physician-philosopher and the other a gem merchant. With the Mughal historians Lahori and Inayat Khan, they supply the contemporary descriptions of Shah Jahan's Peacock Throne known today; Bernier placed it in the Diwan-i-Khas, while Tavernier, Aurangzeb's guest in 1665, probably saw it in the Diwan-i-Am.
- Court associationAurangzeb
On his sixth voyage Tavernier was Aurangzeb's guest at Delhi from 12 September to 11 November 1665, invited so that the emperor could inspect, and buy, the jewels he had brought from Europe. He sold stones to Aurangzeb and to the emperor's uncle Jafar Khan, stayed on for the birthday festivities, and was shown the imperial jewels, beginning with the 280-carat Great Mogul diamond, which the keeper Akel Khan placed in his hands first.
- Present atRed Fort, Delhi
During his 1665 stay Tavernier visited the Red Fort and inspected Shah Jahan's Peacock Throne, which he described in the second volume of his Six Voyages. His account broadly agrees with Lahori's but differs in telling details: a single large peacock above the canopy rather than pairs on each pillar, four steps rather than three, and pearl-studded columns he thought the costliest part. He probably saw it in the Diwan-i-Am, and he lists five other thrones.
- Historical linkKoh-i-Noor
Tavernier never mentions the Koh-i-Noor, though Lahori lists it among the Peacock Throne's diamonds. The likely reason is that in 1665 the historic stones were still with Shah Jahan, imprisoned in Agra Fort; he died in January 1666, and only then did Aurangzeb claim them. The botched cutting by Ortensio Borgio long told of the Koh-i-Noor is now thought to concern the Great Mogul, the stone Tavernier did handle and weighed at 280 carats.
- Trade routeKollur / Golconda diamond fields
Tavernier first visited the Kollur diamond mines on his second voyage (1638–43), after reaching Agra and the court of Shah Jahan and travelling on to the kingdom of Golconda. The 116-carat Tavernier Blue, bought from Kollur and sold to Louis XIV in 1668 for 120,000 livres, was stolen during the French Revolution and reappeared recut as the Hope Diamond. The Great Mogul is also believed to have come from Kollur.
- Traditional linkMehtab Bagh, Agra
Legends attributed to the travelogue of the seventeenth-century French traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier tell that Shah Jahan wished to build a Black Taj Mahal for himself across the river as a twin to the Taj, a plan cut short when his son Aurangzeb imprisoned him. In 1871 the British archaeologist A. C. L. Carlleyle, finding the remains of an old pond at Mehtab Bagh blackened by moss and lichen, mistook them for the foundation of the fabled tomb, and the myth attached itself to the garden.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Jean-Baptiste Tavernier"; "Peacock Throne"; "Great Mogul Diamond"; "Kollur Mine". J.-B. Tavernier, Travels in India, tr. Valentine Ball (1889), 2nd ed. William Crooke (1925); Charles Joret, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier d'après des documents nouveaux (1886).
Open Jean-Baptiste Tavernier in the repository →