A mountain of history – Review of Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand

Diamonds are intrinsically worthless, except for the deep psychological need they fill – Nicky Oppenheimer, South African diamond magnate

Koh-i-Noor (“Mountain of Light” in Persian) is a diamond with a history as rich as its luster. Since this diamond was dug up, probably in the present-day Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in the 13^th century, it has been passed between Mughal Emperors, Persian Shahs, Afghan Emirs and Sikh Maharajas and crisscrossed the area that is now modern day India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan before finding its way into the hands of the British state in the mid-19^th century under Queen Victoria’s reign. It is the history of this exceptional stone, and its equally exceptional owners, which forms the topic of this short and accessible book by historian and travel writer William Dalrymple and journalist Anita Anand.

It is fair to say that few diamonds have filled psychological needs at a deeper level and for a more varied set of people across as many centuries as the 105 carat diamond that is the centerpiece of the Queen Mother’s Crown, which is on display in the Tower of London. The

I am fascinated by the history of objects because they often carry with them a deep history. Something as mundane as a salt cellar from the Benin kingdom (in present-day Nigeria) displayed in the British Museum isn’t just some piece of brilliantly carved ivory. Carved on its face is a testament to the kingdom’s earlier peaceful contact with an European power (i.e., the Portuguese) and its journey to the museum also embodies the history of the kingdom’s later hostile contact with another European power (i.e., the British). Few objects bear as much witness to history as the Koh-i-Noor does and the authors of this book bring this diamond's tryst with history to life in a vivid way. The history of the Koh-i-Noor is the history of the Mughal Empire at its height with powerful kings like Aurangzeb, who cherished the diamond. It is also the history of the decline of Mughal Empire and the sacking and plundering of its cities by the Persian Shah Jahan, the subsequent decline of Shah Jahan’s own dynasty and its replacement with the Afghan Durrani dynasty which came to its definite end with the debacle of the First Anglo-Afghan war in the 1800s. This same gem found its way from the collapsing Durrani dynasty to the emerging Sikh empire in the early 1800s before the current owners (i.e., the British) claimed it after the British East India Company’s conquest of the Punjab from the Sikh Empire in the 1840s. Through all these changing fortunes and brutal battles, the Koh-i-Noor remained an object of great desire and was passed from one conquering empire to the next.

While I got a feel for the eras that span the Koh-i-Noor’s history, I didn’t get the same feel for the depth of characters in the book as I did for other books by Mr. Dalrymple. This is certainly an unfair comparison as this book deals with a history spanning hundreds of years while some of the author's earlier works which I have thoroughly enjoyed have focused on a relatively short span of history: the Return of a King dealt with the events surrounding the First Anglo-Afghan war in the late 1830s / early 1840s while the Last Mughal was largely focused on the events leading to the Indian Rebellion of 1857/58 and its immediate aftermath. This book necessarily glosses over the lives and characters of many of the key actors in the Koh-i-Noor’s history as to do more than that would have led to a multi-volume door-stopper of a book rather than the accessible short read the authors produced. If this book has something close to a flaw, I think it is the evidence one gets that this is a book written by two authors with different styles as the hand-off from one section to the other could be slightly jolting.

Overall, I think this an apt book for the times. In this climate of increased agitation for “de-globalization” and the erection of walls, it is important to remember the bonds of a shared past embedded in a gem that is smack in the center of something as central to British identity as the crown of its monarchs. The centerpiece of the crown isn’t something from the British Isles or even Continental Europe, it is a diadem that for many years adorned the Peacock Throne of Mughal Emperors and was later worn as amulets by Sikh Maharajas.