what is the history of kohinoor, the famous gem?
Answers
‘It was British creation’
“Kohinoor becoming ‘the gem of gems’ was British creation. Bigging up their conquest, they consciously put it on show at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and made it into a symbol of what they had taken from India. That has now turned against the British themselves,” he told PTI in an interview.
The Scottish writer notes that there were diamonds like the Dari-a-Nur or the Orlov, which were bigger in size than the Kohinoor, but have never been called for return.
“There were other bigger Mughal diamonds — the Dari-a-Nur which was taken by Nadir Shah to Iran and the Orlov, now in Kremlin, also taken by Nadir Shah and later passed on to Russia. Why is no one calling their return? The answer is that the Great Exhibition made the Kohinoor the most famous diamond in the world,” he said.
‘Supreme gem’ changed it all
Published by Juggernaut Books, the book which Mr. Dalrymple has co-authored with noted U.K.-based Indian journalist Anita Anand, tells the story of how Kohinoor came to be regarded as the “supreme gem.”
It unearths “new” information about the diamond as it moves from the Mughal courts to Persia to Afghanistan; from Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s durbar in Punjab to the Queen of England’s Crown.
“It is a very interesting history. We try to trace in the book how it became an icon, when it was never the most famous diamond. When it wasn’t the biggest diamond. When the Mughals didn’t refer to it anywhere in their writings. Nor did any of the Sultanates,” he said. He points out that the Kohinoor was certainly an item of colonial loot but dismissed the popular lores doing the rounds on the Internet about its plunder and transfers as, “simply fantasy.”
The Koh-i-Noor (Persian for Mountain of Light; also spelled Kohinoor and Koh-i-nur) is a large, colourless diamond that was found near Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, India, possibly in the 13th century. According to legend, it first weighed 793 carats (158.6 g) uncut, although the earliest well-attested weight is 186 carats (37.2 g); it was first owned by the Kakatiya dynasty. The stone changed hands several times between various factions in South Asia over the next few hundred years, before being possessed by Queen Victoria after the British conquest of the Punjab in 1849.
In 1852, Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, unhappy with its dull and irregular appearance, ordered it cut down from 186 carats (37.2 g). It emerged 42 percent lighter as a dazzling oval-cut brilliant weighing 105.6 carats (21.12 g) and measuring 3.6 cm x 3.2 cm x 1.3 cm.[3] By modern standards, the cut is far from perfect, in that the culet is unusually broad, giving the impression of a black hole when the stone is viewed head-on; it is nevertheless regarded by gemmologists as being full of life.[4] As the diamond's history involves a great deal of fighting between men, the Koh-i-Noor acquired a reputation within the British royal family for bringing bad luck to any man who wears it. Since arriving in the country, it has only ever been worn by female members of the family.[5]
Today, the diamond is set in the front of the Queen Mother's Crown, part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, and is seen by millions of visitors to the Tower of London each year. The governments of India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan all claim ownership of the Koh-i-Noor and have demanded its return at various times in recent decades. The British government insists the gem was obtained legally under the terms of the Treaty of Lahore.