Book reviews

SUBTITLED The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond, the publishers claim this is “the first comprehensive and authoritative history of the Koh-i-Noor, arguably the most celebrated and mythologised jewel in the world”.

It’s written by historian, writer and researcher of all things pertaining to the history of the Indian subcontinent, William Dalrymple, together with Anita Anand, a radio and TV journalist.

Born in London to Punjabi Sikh parents who moved to England after the partition of India, and she has also written a book about Sophia, suffragette daughter of Duleep Singh, the last maharaja of Lahore.

They have a riveting story to tell, not just history and myth-busting, but a classic blend of blood and bling, for “oceans of pearls and gold and hecatombs of severed heads, for monstrous heaps of eyeballs – 20 000 of them – and precious stones in quantities that beggar all description”. Here we have a veritable combination of an oriental Games of Thrones – Dalrymple’s own reference – and Dan Brown-esque intrigue and manipulation.

Indeed, this history is but the background to what Dalrymple and Anand do not deal with: post-colonial claims for the return of cultural treasures. In the wake of the 1970 Unesco convention on cultural property, the Pakistani government made a formal request in 1976 for the return of the diamond: it was refused; and in 1983 the Indian government also made a formal request: also refused; and there are many other geographical, religious and national entities who could make such claims.

The book’s first part is written by Dalrymple, who draws on a wide range of literature and memoirs. He covers the convoluted passage of the large stone as it made its tortuous journey across the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan via Persia to the Punjabi treasury in the early 19th century.

“He paints a picture in which elegance and refinement are married to treachery and hideous brutality… This is a book which anyone interested in 19th century India and Indio-British relations will want to read,” wrote Allan Massie in his review for The Scotsman. It also ties in neatly with Dalrymple’s previous masterly The Return of a King, which tells of the first British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839 that led to the First Anglo-Afghan War. Told through Dalrymple’s access to contemporary Afghan accounts of the conflict, it was an important story of colonial ambitions and cultural collision, folly and hubris.

The diamond itself, the so-called Mountain of Light, weighed about 190 metric carats and “resembled, perhaps, a huge iceberg rising steeply to a high, domed peak. Around the edge of this dome, the stone had been faceted into simple Mughal rose-cut, leaving the short but irregular crystal tails or azimuths sloping off.”

In 1628, the Mughal Shah Jahan commissioned the extravagantly bejewelled Peacock Throne. This was a solid gold throne covered with diamonds, rubies, pearls and emeralds. It was finished in 1635 and evoked the mythical throne of Solomon (as described in the Qur’an). On the top of the canopy was a peacock “made of emeralds and rubies; on to its head was attached a diamond known as the Koh-i-Noor… whose price no one but God Himself could know”. So wrote Persian historian Marvi in an eyewitness account in the 1740s.

By the time it was in the possession of Ranjit Singh in 1813, it was being worn mounted in an armlet. It came to the attention of the British, who were busy “civilising” India, first through the East India Company and later through the British government as it set about creating the British Empire.

By now, the Koh-i-Noor diamond was perceived as a powerful symbol of sovereignty. In 1849, Lord Dalhousie (the governor-general, whose avowed intention was that “the extinction of all native states of India is just a question of time” – the underlying motive of which was the expansion of British exports to India) arrived in Lahore to accept the Act of Submission from the 10-year-old maharaja together with the Koh-i-Noor.

The second part of the book is devoted to the history of the stone and its owners after the cremation of Ranjit Singh in June 1839. Anand picks up the story as Ranjit’s 10-year-old heir, Maharaja Duleep Singh, is forced to hand over the diamond to Dalhousie in an act of perfidy that will be familiar to anyone who has read Britain’s imperial story: three years earlier, the British had assured the prince’s advisers they would stay until he was 16 and old enough to rule by himself.

The story of the diamond’s arrival in London, its display at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the re-cutting of the stone by Prince Albert and the Duke of Wellington to give it brilliance, the tragic life of the exiled young maharaja who converted to Christianity under the influence of his Scottish guardian and came to England – all has been told before. Why tell it now? Dalrymple tells how Lord Dalhousie commissioned one of his junior assistant magistrates in Delhi, Theo Metcalfe, to research and write the diamond’s story and the clerk constructed an “enjoyably lively but entirely unsubstantiated narrative based on Delhi bazaar gossip”, much of which is still accepted as fact. So, Dalrymple and Anand have gone some way to rectifying the situation.

Anand closes the book by musing whether the Koh-i-Noor might ever be returned to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan or India, all of whom have made claims to it.

She also imagines it on the head of a future Queen Camilla. Chances are the Koh-i-Noor will remain in the Tower of London, where Queen Elizabeth II has left it, preferring not to wear a crown bearing it.

It’s only the 90th largest diamond in the world. The queen’s two Cullinan diamonds are significantly bigger and come without the Koh-i-Noor’s baggage – despite the colonial baggage of South African history and no claim for their return – yet.

A combination of an oriental Game

of Thrones and Dan Brown-esque intrigue