Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond

by William Dalrymple

Among the stones Tavernier was shown that day was the enormous gem he calls the Great Mughal Diamond and which he says was the huge gem given to Shah Jahan by Mir Jumla: ‘The first piece that Akil Khan (Chief Keeper of the King’s jewels) placed in my hands was the great diamond, which is rose cut, round and very high on one side. On the lower edge there is a slight crack, and a little flaw in it. Its water is fine, and weighs 286 [metric] carats.’ He also mentions that the stone had been badly cut since Mir Jumla gifted it, and that thanks to the incompetence of the man responsible, Hortensio Borgio, the stone had lost much of its original astonishing size. Tavernier also saw two other great diamonds, one of which was a flat, pink stone in a table cut, which he calls the Great Table Diamond, and which from his drawing is clearly the major portion of the Darya-i-Noor, now in Tehran.31 Was the Great Mughal diamond the Koh-i-Noor? In the nineteenth century it was assumed that it must be, but most modern scholars are now convinced that the Great Mughal is actually the Orlov, which with its higher, more rounded dome looks much more like Tavernier’s sketch of the Great Mughal. Moreover, the Orlov and the Great Mughal have the same type of cut, and the same pattern of facets.32 None of the other stones seen by Tavernier look at all like the Koh-i-Noor either. How is it possible that Tavernier failed to see the Koh-i-Noor when the emperor explicitly gave permission for him to see ...