Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond

by William Dalrymple

In a letter from the court of Emperor Jahangir to the future King Charles I, Sir Thomas Roe, the first English ambassador to the court of the great Mughal, reported in 1616 that he had entered a world of almost unimaginable splendour. The emperor, he wrote, was: clothed, or rather laden with diamonds, rubies, pearls, and other precious vanities, so great, so glorious! His head, necke, breast, armes, above the elbowes, at the wrists, his fingers each one with at least two or three rings, are fettered with chaines of dyamonds, rubies as great as walnuts – some greater – and pearles such as mine eyes were amazed at … in jewells, which is one of his felicityes, hee is the treasury of the world, buyeing all that comes, and heaping rich stones as if hee would rather build [with them] than wear them.