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

by William Dalrymple

Even before Nader Shah had taken Kandahar, there were rumours in Persia that he was secretly planning to mount a raid on the treasures of Mughal Delhi, ‘to pluck some golden feathers’ from the Mughal peacock. Indeed he was already carefully cultivating two minor grievances as excuses to do so: the Mughals had recently given shelter to several Iranian rebels fleeing his tyranny, while some Mughal customs officials in Sindh had seized the effects of an Iranian ambassador and refused to return them. Nader Shah duly sent envoys to Delhi to complain that the Mughals were not behaving as friends, and to demand a full apology; but he received no redress. Advance warnings by Nasir Khan, the Mughal governor of Kabul, that Nader was clearly planning an invasion were also ignored by Muhammad Shah’s government in Delhi. On 10 May 1738, Nader Shah began his march into northern Afghanistan. On 21 May he crossed the border into the Mughal Empire, heading for the Mughal summer capital of Kabul, one of the empire’s most strategic cities. In this way he began the first invasion of India since Babur’s, two centuries earlier. The great citadel of Kabul, the Bala Hissar, surrendered at the end of June and, with no military resources at his command, there was little the Mughal governor could do to save it. As the Delhi courtier, poet and historian Anand Ram Mukhlis noted, the governor ‘had often written to Muhammad Shah concerning the want of money [to pay his troops], but none of his represent...