The Kohinoor’s Bloody Trail: A Diamond’s Journey Through Empire and Conquest
The diamond caught the lamplight and threw it back in a thousand directions. Even in the dimness of the treasury chamber, it blazed with an inner fire that seemed almost alive. The Persian conqueror’s hand trembled slightly as he reached for it—not from fear, but from the weight of recognition. This was no ordinary stone. This was the stuff of legend, of prophecy, of empire itself. Around him, Delhi burned. The Mughal court lay in ruins. And from the shattered fragments of the Peacock Throne, Nader Shah of Persia plucked the most famous diamond the world had ever known. The year was 1739, and the Koh-i-Noor—the Mountain of Light—was about to begin the most documented chapter of its violent odyssey through history.
But that moment in Delhi, vivid as it is in historical records, represents merely the beginning of the diamond’s verifiable story. Before Nader Shah’s rapacious fingers closed around it, before it adorned the legendary Peacock Throne, before it became the symbol of Mughal magnificence, the Koh-i-Noor existed in a realm of shadows and uncertainty. What we know for certain could fill a pamphlet; what legend claims could fill libraries. The truth, as colonial administrator Theo Metcalfe noted with characteristic British understatement, is that there exists “very meagre and imperfect” evidence of the diamond’s early history before the 1740s. This admission is crucial, for it means that much of what has been written about the Koh-i-Noor’s ancient past—the curses, the prophecies, the hands through which it supposedly passed—exists in the uncertain territory between history and myth.
Yet even without the romantic embellishments, the stone’s documented journey is extraordinary enough. From the mines of Golconda to the crown of a British queen, the Koh-i-Noor has witnessed the rise and fall of empires, changed hands through violence and subterfuge, and inspired both desperate greed and diplomatic crises. Its story is inseparable from the story of India itself—of conquest and resistance, of wealth extracted and power consolidated, of cultural treasures that became symbols of colonial domination. Today, weighing 105.6 carats and set in the Crown of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, it remains one of the world’s most recognizable gems and one of its most controversial.
The World Before: Golconda’s Glittering Legacy
To understand the Koh-i-Noor, one must first understand Golconda—not merely as a place but as a concept that dominated the European imagination for centuries. When Westerners spoke of Golconda, they spoke in tones of wonder and avarice, for this region in present-day Andhra Pradesh was the source of the world’s most magnificent diamonds. The very word “Golconda” became synonymous with inexhaustible wealth, a place where, if the tales were to be believed, the earth itself bled precious stones.
The Kollur mine, where the Koh-i-Noor originated, was part of this legendary diamond belt. These were not the industrial mining operations of later centuries, but rather vast excavations that employed thousands of laborers, working in conditions that ranged from merely harsh to utterly brutal. The process of extracting diamonds from the earth was labor-intensive and dangerous. Miners would dig deep into the alluvial deposits, sorting through countless tons of gravel in search of the telltale glint that might indicate a valuable stone. For every diamond found, millions of stones were discarded. For every stone of value, countless more were merely adequate. And for every truly exceptional diamond—the kind that would catch the eye of emperors and change the course of history—there might be decades of backbreaking labor.
The society that surrounded these mines was as complex as it was stratified. At the top were the rulers and nobles who controlled the mining rights, extracting both tribute and treasure from the earth. Below them were merchants and dealers, many of whom had traveled from as far as Persia and Central Asia to participate in the diamond trade. Further down were the overseers, the skilled cutters and evaluators who could determine a stone’s worth with a glance. And at the bottom were the miners themselves—men, women, and sometimes children who spent their lives in the pursuit of wealth they would never possess.
This was the world into which the Koh-i-Noor was born—or rather, from which it was extracted. We do not know the exact date of its discovery, nor do we know the name of the person who first pulled it from the earth. Such details, if they were ever recorded, have been lost to time. What we do know is that by the time it enters the historical record with certainty, it had already been cut and shaped, reduced from its original rough form to something approaching its current state. Its earliest attested weight was 186 old carats—significantly larger than its present 105.6 carats, a reduction that speaks to the many hands through which it passed and the many times it was recut to suit changing tastes and technologies.
The Golconda region during the medieval period was far from a peaceful mining district. It was fought over, conquered, and reconquered by various dynasties and sultanates, each seeking to control the source of these precious stones. The Bahmani Sultanate, the Qutb Shahi dynasty, and eventually the Mughal Empire all, at various times, claimed dominion over these mines. Each conquest brought new systems of extraction, new methods of tribute, and new destinations for the diamonds that emerged from the earth. The gems flowed northward and westward, adorning the courts of Delhi, Isfahan, and beyond, each stone carrying with it the labor and suffering of those who had brought it to light.
The Players: Shadows and Certainties
Here we encounter one of the great frustrations of the Koh-i-Noor’s history: the lack of verifiable documentation about its early owners. Popular accounts claim it passed through the hands of various Mughal emperors, that it was worn by Babur, possessed by Shah Jahan, and set into the Peacock Throne by order of the empire’s greatest rulers. These stories have been repeated so often they have acquired the patina of truth. Yet when we examine the historical record with care, we find that these claims rest on uncertain foundations.
What can be stated with confidence is far more limited but no less fascinating. By the 1740s, the diamond was certainly in Mughal possession, and it was certainly associated with the Peacock Throne—that magnificent seat of imperial power that symbolized Mughal wealth and authority. The throne itself was a wonder of the age, commissioned by Shah Jahan and encrusted with countless precious stones. Historical accounts vary in their descriptions of its exact appearance and the number and type of gems that adorned it, but all agree on its overwhelming magnificence. The Koh-i-Noor, according to Muhammad Kazim Marvi, was one of many stones embedded in this throne, though apparently not the centerpiece or most prominent jewel.
The Mughals who possessed the throne and its treasures in the early 18th century were not the confident empire-builders of earlier generations. By the 1740s, the Mughal Empire was in advanced decline, its authority increasingly nominal, its territories fragmenting into independent kingdoms and sultanates. The emperor in Delhi was still treated with ceremonial respect, still maintained the trappings of imperial power, but the reality was that effective control had slipped away. Provincial governors ruled as independent monarchs, and external powers looked on with increasing interest at the wealth that lay seemingly undefended in the Mughal capital.
Into this situation stepped Nader Shah, the Persian conqueror whose invasion of northern India would have devastating consequences. Nader Shah was a military genius who had risen from relative obscurity to forge a new Persian empire. He was ruthless, brilliant, and driven by an insatiable appetite for conquest and plunder. His campaign into India in 1739 was motivated partly by strategic considerations—the pursuit of Afghan rebels who had taken refuge in Mughal territory—but primarily by the lure of Indian wealth. Delhi’s treasures were legendary, and Nader Shah intended to claim them.
The first verifiable record of the Koh-i-Noor comes from Muhammad Kazim Marvi’s historical account of this invasion. Marvi was a chronicler who documented Nader Shah’s campaigns, and his descriptions provide our earliest reliable information about the diamond. He identifies the Koh-i-Noor as one of the many precious stones that adorned the Peacock Throne, and he records its removal from Delhi along with the rest of Nader Shah’s massive haul of treasure. This documentation is crucial because it establishes a definitive point in the diamond’s history—a moment when we can say with certainty where it was and who possessed it.
Rising Tension: The Gathering Storm
The stage was set for one of the most dramatic episodes in Indian history. In 1738, Nader Shah’s forces crossed the Khyber Pass and advanced into the Indian subcontinent. The Mughal emperor, Muhammad Shah, known to history by the damning epithet “Rangeela” (the pleasure-loving), was caught unprepared. His empire’s military capabilities had atrophied during decades of internal conflict and administrative decay. The provincial armies that might once have rallied to Delhi’s defense were now independent forces pursuing their own agendas. The emperor’s own troops were poorly equipped, inadequately trained, and led by commanders more skilled in courtly intrigue than battlefield tactics.
The Persian advance was devastating in its efficiency. Town after town fell to Nader Shah’s disciplined forces. The contrast between the two armies—one hardened by years of constant warfare in the harsh landscapes of Persia and Afghanistan, the other softened by decades of relative peace and internal squabbling—was stark and consequential. When the armies finally met in battle near Karnal in February 1739, the outcome was never really in doubt. The Mughal forces were routed, and Muhammad Shah himself was captured.
The fall of Karnal opened the road to Delhi. Nader Shah entered the Mughal capital not as a diplomatic guest but as a conqueror, though initially he maintained the pretense of respect for the Mughal emperor, who was technically his prisoner but treated with ceremonial courtesy. For a brief moment, it seemed the occupation might be relatively bloodless. Nader Shah took up residence in the city, his forces encamped throughout Delhi, and began the process of inventorying the imperial treasures that were now his by right of conquest.
Then came the massacre. The exact circumstances remain disputed in historical accounts, but the basic facts are clear: following rumors of Nader Shah’s death and a subsequent attack on Persian soldiers in the city, Nader Shah ordered a general massacre of Delhi’s population. What followed was one of the darkest chapters in the city’s long history. For hours, Persian soldiers moved through Delhi’s streets, killing indiscriminately. The death toll, while impossible to determine with certainty, was catastrophic. Thousands—some accounts claim tens of thousands—perished. The city’s bazaars burned. Its population fled or hid in terror.
The Looting of an Empire
When the killing finally stopped, the systematic looting began. This was no random pillaging but rather an organized extraction of wealth on a scale rarely seen in history. Nader Shah’s officials moved through the imperial palace, the treasuries, the homes of nobles, inventorying and seizing everything of value. Gold, silver, precious stones, works of art, fine fabrics, weapons—all were catalogued and prepared for transport back to Persia. The total value of the plunder is impossible to calculate with precision, but contemporary accounts describe it as almost inconceivable in its magnitude.
At the center of this acquisition stood the Peacock Throne itself. This was not merely a chair but a political symbol, an artistic masterpiece, and a repository of wealth. Its removal from Delhi to Persia represented not just the transfer of a valuable object but the symbolic transfer of imperial authority itself. The throne was carefully dismantled for transport, each piece recorded, each jewel noted. Among those jewels, according to Muhammad Kazim Marvi’s chronicle, was the Koh-i-Noor.
We do not know if Nader Shah immediately recognized the diamond’s significance. Marvi’s account suggests it was simply one of many stones on the throne—extraordinarily valuable, certainly, but perhaps not yet singled out as uniquely special. The very name “Koh-i-Noor” (Mountain of Light) and the legends that would grow around the stone may have come later, as its reputation developed and its story was embellished with each retelling. What we can say is that when the Persian caravan finally departed Delhi in May 1739, loaded with treasure and accompanied by thousands of Indian craftsmen and slaves who were being forcibly relocated to Persia, the Koh-i-Noor went with it.
The departure marked the end of an era. The Mughal Empire would continue to exist nominally for another century, but it would never recover from this blow. The psychological impact was as devastating as the material loss. Delhi had been sacked before, but never had its wealth been so thoroughly extracted, never had an occupying force been so efficient and comprehensive in its plundering. The Peacock Throne’s absence was a daily reminder of imperial impotence. And the Koh-i-Noor, along with countless other treasures, was gone—relocated to Persia as part of the greatest haul of plunder the 18th century would see.
The Turning Point: A Diamond’s Journey West
The caravan that left Delhi carried with it not just treasure but the accumulated wealth of generations of Mughal rule. The logistics of transporting such vast quantities of gold, silver, and precious stones across the harsh terrain between India and Persia were staggering. Thousands of camels, horses, and elephants were required. Entire regiments marched alongside to guard the treasure from bandits and rival forces. The journey took months, winding through mountain passes and across rivers, each day bringing new challenges of terrain and supply.
For the Koh-i-Noor, this journey represented a fundamental transformation in its status and meaning. In Delhi, it had been one jewel among many in the Mughal collection—spectacular, certainly, but part of a larger assemblage of imperial regalia. In Persia, its story would begin to crystallize into something more specific, more legendary. Historical accounts from the Persian court, however, are frustratingly vague about the diamond’s immediate fate after its arrival. We know it remained in Persian possession, but the details of how it was displayed, who wore it, and what significance it held for Nader Shah himself remain uncertain.
Nader Shah’s own fate was itself dramatic and violent. The same ruthless ambition that had driven his conquests eventually turned his court against him. In 1747, less than a decade after his invasion of India, he was assassinated by his own officers during a military campaign. His death threw his empire into chaos, and the treasures he had accumulated were scattered. Different accounts provide different stories about what happened to the Koh-i-Noor during this period of disorder. Some claim it passed to Nader Shah’s descendants, others that it was seized by rival claimants to the Persian throne. The historical record becomes murky, obscured by the chaos of competing dynasties and civil war.
What is known with more certainty is that the diamond eventually came into the possession of Ahmad Shah Durrani, the founder of the Durrani Empire in Afghanistan. The exact circumstances of this transfer remain debated by historians. Some accounts suggest it was a gift, others that it was seized during the tumultuous period following Nader Shah’s assassination. Regardless of how the transfer occurred, the Koh-i-Noor had now moved from Persia to Afghanistan, continuing its westward journey through successive empires and rulers.
From Afghanistan, the diamond’s path would eventually lead back toward India, but to a different India than the one it had left. The Mughal Empire’s fragmentation had created new centers of power, new kingdoms and confederacies competing for dominance. Among these emerging powers was the Sikh Empire in Punjab, which under Maharaja Ranjit Singh would become one of the subcontinent’s most formidable states. Through a series of events that remain incompletely documented, the Koh-i-Noor came into Sikh possession, likely during conflicts between the Sikh Empire and Afghan forces in the early 19th century.
Aftermath: From Lahore to London
Under Sikh rule, the Koh-i-Noor acquired new significance. For Maharaja Ranjit Singh, it was more than just a valuable gem—it was a symbol of his kingdom’s power and legitimacy, a connection to the Mughal legacy, and a trophy that demonstrated his triumph over Afghan rivals. The diamond was worn by the Maharaja on state occasions, displayed to visiting dignitaries, and carefully guarded as one of his most prized possessions. During this period, European visitors to the Sikh court began writing detailed descriptions of the stone, providing some of our most reliable information about its appearance and size before its final recutting.
The Sikh Empire’s golden age was relatively brief. After Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, the kingdom was wracked by internal conflicts and succession disputes. This instability, combined with the expanding ambitions of the British East India Company, set the stage for confrontation. The Anglo-Sikh Wars of the 1840s resulted in the defeat of the Sikh forces and the annexation of Punjab by the British. Among the terms of the treaty that formalized this conquest was a clause specifically addressing the Koh-i-Noor: it was to be surrendered to the British Crown.
The diamond arrived in Britain in 1850, presented to Queen Victoria as a spoil of war and a symbol of British dominance over the subcontinent. Its arrival generated enormous public interest. Thousands queued to see it when it was displayed at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Yet many viewers were disappointed. The stone, while undeniably large and valuable, did not sparkle and flash with the brilliance that Victorian audiences expected from a diamond. Its cut, appropriate for earlier aesthetic traditions that valued size and retained weight over optical effects, seemed dull to eyes accustomed to the newer cutting styles that maximized brilliance.
Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, decided the stone needed to be recut. In 1852, the Koh-i-Noor was taken to the workshops of Garrard & Co., the Crown Jewelers, where it underwent a transformation that was both physical and symbolic. Over 38 days, the stone was recut using a steam-powered mill, a process watched by curious visitors including the Duke of Wellington. When the cutting was complete, the diamond had been reduced from 186 carats to 105.6 carats—a loss of more than 40 percent of its weight. The new cut provided the brilliance that Victorian tastes demanded, but in the process, a significant portion of the stone’s physical substance was literally ground away, turned to powder to satisfy contemporary aesthetics.
This recutting serves as a metaphor for the broader colonial project. Just as the diamond was reshaped to fit British preferences, so too were colonized territories and peoples expected to conform to British norms and systems. The Koh-i-Noor’s transformation from a Mughal gem to a centerpiece of the British Crown Jewels paralleled India’s transformation from an independent civilization to a colony administered for the benefit of the empire. The stone that had once symbolized Mughal magnificence, Persian conquest, and Sikh power now symbolized British dominion over the subcontinent.
Legacy: A Diamond and Its Discontents
Today, the Koh-i-Noor resides in the Tower of London, set in the Crown of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, displayed behind bulletproof glass to millions of tourists annually. Its current setting dates to 1937, when it was placed in the crown created for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation as queen consort. The diamond has remained there through subsequent decades, a glittering artifact that continues to generate both fascination and controversy.
The controversy surrounding the Koh-i-Noor centers on questions of ownership and repatriation. Since India gained independence in 1947, there have been periodic calls for the diamond’s return. The Indian government has at various times formally requested its repatriation, arguing that it was taken by conquest and represents stolen cultural property. Pakistan has also claimed the diamond, noting that it was seized from Lahore, which is now in Pakistani territory. Afghanistan and Iran have made their own claims, based on earlier periods of possession. Each claim rests on different historical arguments and different interpretations of the diamond’s journey through time.
The British position has generally been that the diamond was legitimately acquired through treaty—specifically, the Treaty of Lahore that ended the Anglo-Sikh Wars. British officials have pointed out that returning the Koh-i-Noor would set a precedent that might require the repatriation of countless other artifacts acquired during the colonial period. There are also practical questions: to whom should it be returned, given the competing claims? Should it go to the Indian government, even though it was never in the possession of an independent Indian state? To Pakistan, where it was last located before British acquisition? To Afghanistan or Iran, representing earlier stages of its journey?
These debates reflect larger questions about colonialism, cultural property, and historical justice that extend far beyond a single diamond. The Koh-i-Noor has become a symbol in these discussions—a tangible, specific object around which abstract arguments about empire, ownership, and cultural heritage can crystallize. Its presence in the Crown Jewels serves as a daily reminder of British colonial power and the extraction of wealth from colonized territories. For many Indians, Pakistanis, Afghans, and Iranians, the diamond’s location in London represents an unhealed historical wound, a continuing assertion of colonial-era power dynamics into the present day.
The diamond’s significance extends beyond politics into questions of historical memory and national identity. For India, the Koh-i-Noor is connected to larger narratives about the subcontinent’s wealthy past, the disruptions of colonial conquest, and the need to reclaim cultural heritage. Its story encapsulates centuries of Indian history—from the mines of Golconda through the Mughal zenith to colonial subjugation. The fact that such a significant artifact remains in British possession serves as a focal point for discussions about historical justice and the legacies of colonialism.
What History Forgets: Between Legend and Record
In the vast literature surrounding the Koh-i-Noor, certain truths often get lost amid the more dramatic legends. Perhaps the most important of these forgotten facts is the one acknowledged by Theo Metcalfe: we know remarkably little about the diamond’s early history with certainty. The elaborate stories of ancient curses, of prophecies foretelling doom to male owners, of possession by specific Hindu deities—these are largely later embellishments, stories that grew around the diamond as its fame increased.
The curse narrative, in particular, deserves skepticism. The famous claim that the Koh-i-Noor brings misfortune to male owners but safety to females cannot be traced to any ancient source. It appears to be a later invention, possibly influenced by the observation that several of its documented male owners met violent ends—but in eras and contexts where violent death was common for rulers generally. The British Crown’s decision to set the diamond in queens’ crowns rather than kings’ may have reinforced this narrative, but it originated from fashion and tradition rather than supernatural belief.
What also gets forgotten in popular accounts is the diamond’s diminishment. The reduction from 186 carats to 105.6 carats represents an enormous loss of material. That missing weight—more than 80 carats of diamond—was ground away during the 1852 recutting, literally turned to dust to achieve the optical effects preferred by Victorian aesthetics. This physical transformation mirrors the broader pattern of colonial extraction: resources taken, reshaped to metropolitan preferences, with the costs borne by the source. The Koh-i-Noor we see today is not the Koh-i-Noor that Nader Shah looted from Delhi or that Ranjit Singh wore in Lahore—it is a smaller, fundamentally altered version, cut to suit British rather than Mughal or Persian aesthetic traditions.
Another often-overlooked aspect is the diamond’s relative obscurity before the 18th century. While later narratives trace its ownership back to legendary antiquity, the first verifiable documentation comes from Muhammad Kazim Marvi’s chronicle of the 1740s invasion. This doesn’t mean the diamond wasn’t important before that date—it clearly was—but it suggests that much of its mythological overlay was added later, as its fame grew and various parties sought to claim it as part of their heritage. The Koh-i-Noor’s story is as much about the construction of legend as about historical fact.
Finally, what often gets lost in discussions of the Koh-i-Noor is the human cost of its extraction and the labor that brought it from the earth. The miners of Kollur who worked in dangerous conditions, the craftsmen who first cut and shaped it, the soldiers who died in the various conquests through which it passed—these people are largely anonymous in historical records. The diamond’s glamour obscures the suffering that attended its journey. Each transfer of ownership, each moment of possession by a new ruler or empire, typically came at the cost of violence, displacement, and loss. The Koh-i-Noor’s beauty and value rest on foundations of human labor and suffering that the gemstone’s brilliance helps us forget.
The diamond continues to fascinate because it connects us tangibly to the past. Unlike events that we can only read about or imagine, the Koh-i-Noor is physically present—we can see it, marvel at it, contemplate its journey. It has survived wars, assassinations, the rise and fall of empires. It has been worn by emperors and shahs, seized by conquerors, displayed to millions. Its story, even stripped of embellishment and reduced to verifiable facts, remains extraordinary—a material object that has witnessed and survived centuries of human ambition, conflict, and transformation. In its crystalline structure are encoded questions about ownership, cultural heritage, and historical justice that remain unresolved and perhaps unresolvable. The Koh-i-Noor’s bloody trail through history has not yet reached its end. Where it will ultimately rest, and what its final chapter will be, remains to be written.