The Koh-i-nÛr is the most ancient, the most illustrious, and the most traveled of all our diamonds. It is what is called a white diamond, but its color would be of the deepest crimson, if only one thousandth part of the blood which has been shed for it could have tinted its rays. It looms through the mist of ages until the mind refuses to trace further backwards its nebulous career.

It is to an emperor that we owe the first contemporary account of the imperial gem. In 1526 Baber, the Mogul conqueror, speaks of it as among the captured treasures of Delhi. But that was by no means the first time that it mingled in the affairs of men. It was already "the famous diamond" in Baber's time, and a wild tradition would have us believe that it was found no less than five thousand years ago. If it were found then, and if it has been ever since the contested prize of adventurers, thieves and all sorts of marauders, we cannot be too thankful that forty-seven of those fifty centuries are mercifully hidden from us.

Sultan Baber was a great man, a mighty conqueror and a good writer. He has left full and minute journals of his long adventurous life, which take the panting reader through such a series of battles, sieges, conquests, defeats, royal pageants and hair-breadth escapes, that at last one cries out with wonder, "Can this man have been mortal to have lived through all this?"

Baber came from good old conquering stock. His father was sixth in descent from Tamerlane the Tartar, and his mother stood somewhat nearer to Jenghis Khan. Following in the footsteps of his fierce ancestors, Baber invaded India, or as he himself complacently remarks: "he put his foot in the stirrup of resolution and went against the Emperor Ibrahim." Rushing down like a devastating whirlwind from his mountain fastnesses around Cabul, Baber fell upon the Punjaub, first striking down all that opposed him and then writing about it in his Memoirs.

On the twenty-first of April, 1526, he encountered the army of Ibrahim on the field of Paniput. "The sun was spear-high when the contest began, and at midday they were completely beaten and my men were exulting in victory," says Baber. The Indian emperor was killed and his head was brought to the victorious Mogul. Immediately after the battle, the conqueror sent forward two flying squadrons to Agra and Delhi respectively to seize the treasures of the fallen king. The troop which went to Agra was commanded by HumayÛn, the favorite son of Baber. It is with this troop and its doings that we are concerned, but what was found in the Hindoo treasury had best be told by the conqueror himself:

We may reasonably doubt how much of free will there was in the gift from a defeated Hindoo prince to his Afghan conqueror. Let us question this as we may, there is little doubt as to what diamond it was, although Baber gives it no name. The Sultan Ala-ed-din, to whom the imperial memoir-writer here refers, flourished a couple of centuries previously, and it is generally believed that he obtained "the famous diamond" in 1304 when he conquered the Rajah of Malwa in whose family it had been for ages.

How it eventually came into the hands of Bikermajet is not explained. But in the wild whirl of revolution and insurrection, which form the main staple of Indian history, many things get hopelessly mixed, and a diamond might easily turn up unexpectedly and be quite unable to account for itself. Baber goes on to relate that the great diamond—we will antedate its name by two centuries and call it henceforward the Koh-i-nÛr—was valued by a competent judge of diamonds "at half the daily expenditure of the whole world"—an expression which for grandiloquent vagueness can scarcely be surpassed. Fortunately the same competent judge had not the weighing of the stone, or we should be befogged by some further Oriental hyperbole.

The emperor however says distinctly that the diamond weighed about eight mishkals, which being interpreted means about one hundred and eighty-six carats of our weight, or a little less than the Orloff and fifty carats more than the Regent. It is mainly on the evidence of the weight thus carefully recorded by Baber, that we identify the Koh-i-nÛr, and can trace its subsequent career. On its arrival in England its exact weight was found to be one hundred and eighty-six and one-sixteenth carats, which agrees with the figure given by Baber as afterwards computed by dependable authorities. When we consider the extreme rarity of these great diamonds, coupled with the fact that no two stones are of exactly the same weight, we may feel pretty safe in concluding that Baber's "famous diamond" and our Koh-i nÛr are one and the same stone, especially as henceforward its history is tolerably consecutive.

This magnificent gem the emperor gave to his beloved son HumayÛn, who had very dutifully offered it to his father as tribute. It is somewhat painful to learn that HumayÛn rewarded this generosity by base ingratitude. The very next year we find Baber making this complaint:

It was surely not a comely action in the man who had received the Koh-i-nÛr as a gift from the hands of his father, to plunder that father's treasure houses. Baber was at all events in full possession of his health and power and was abundantly able to enforce the obedience of his son. He again admitted HumayÛn into favor, and four years later, namely in 1530, we find this fondly-cherished son languishing in mortal illness. The father was in despair, and sent him down the Ganges one hundred miles to Agra in hopes of benefiting him, but apparently to no purpose. A man of great piety was appealed to for his opinion, and he declared that in such cases the Almighty sometimes deigned to receive a man's most valuable possession as a ransom for the life of his friend. Baber declared, that next to the life of HumayÛn, his own was what he held most precious in the world, and that he would offer it up as a sacrifice. His courtiers, aghast at the purport of such a vow, begged him to offer up instead "that great diamond taken at Agra," and reputed to be the most valuable thing on earth.

But the Koh-i-nÛr, almost priceless as it was, Baber esteemed at a lower figure than his own existence. The self-devoted emperor walked thrice around the bed of his son, saying aloud: "I have borne it away, I have borne it away." Immediately thereafter he was observed to sink into illness, while HumayÛn as steadily regained his health. So all Eastern historians of the time declare, devoutly believing in the miracle. Perhaps we, more sceptical, may account for it by suggesting that both men, father and son, were suffering from Indian fever, and that the elder died, while the younger was able to live through it.

HumayÛn must have retained possession of the Koh-i-nÛr during his adventurous life, for his son, the celebrated Akbar, appears to have bequeathed it in turn to his son and successor, Jehangir. This Jehangir was the most magnificent of all the Mogul emperors, or indeed it might be safely added of all the emperors of the world. He was a great admirer of diamonds of which he possessed a vast quantity. He must have inherited an immense number of jewels from his father Akbar, for in his memoirs he describes his crown, which he valued at a sum equivalent to ten millions of dollars, and which was composed exclusively of the diamonds and other jewels which Akbar had purchased.

This seems to establish the fact that the Koh-i-nÛr was not incorporated in the imperial crown. It may possibly have been one of those magnificent diamonds which he used so lavishly in the adornment of his renowned peacock throne, the value of which amounted, according to his own estimate, to the unheard-of figure of forty millions of dollars. Some writers indeed go so far as to assert that the Koh-i-nÛr was one of the eyes of that stupendous peacock, which was entirely composed of precious stones, and whose out-spread tail overshadowed the throne of the Moguls. According to them, too, the Orloff diamond was the other eye. But this is clearly a mistake; we have already seen where the Orloff came from—a thousand miles and more from Delhi.

It seems most probable that the peerless stone was worn as a personal ornament. There is extant an interesting contemporary print, which represents Jehangir decked out with a profusion of large pearls, in addition to which he wears around his neck a long string of various jewels. In the center of this chain hangs one stone of such exceptional size that it may well be the Koh-i-nÛr. This however is only conjectural. Terry, the author of the print, chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe, who was sent on an embassy from James I. to the Grand Mogul, does not mention the Koh-i-nÛr by name. He merely observes that the Emperor was in the habit of wearing around his neck "a string of all his best jewels," and since the Koh-i-nÛr was undoubtedly the finest diamond then known, and was apparently in his possession, it is more than probable that it would figure in the necklace.

Jehangir's empress was the celebrated NÛr Jehan (Light of the World), a princess famous alike for her beauty and her wisdom. The emperor says in his autobiography that she had the entire management of his household and of his treasure, whether gold or jewels. He might have justly added that she had the entire management of himself also, for he was completely under her influence. This beautiful Light of the World must have been uncommonly fond of jewels, as the emperor says that he had to give her thirty-five millions of dollars at their marriage to buy the needful jewels. Also NÛr Jehan is said to have invented the now world-famous perfume, attar of roses. Toward the end of Jehangir's life the Koh-i-nÛr and all his other diamonds, we are told, ceased to charm, and he no longer desired to possess them. Even of diamonds, it appears, one may have a surfeit.

Shah Jehan, son of Jehangir, ascended the throne of India in 1627, and was if possible more addicted to jewels than his father. He caused basins of diamonds to be waved over his head in order to avert evil. This sort of incantation seems to have failed of its purpose in his case for he was dethroned and imprisoned by his rebellious son, Aurung-zeb, who kept him in confinement during the last seven years of his life. His diamonds and his daughter, Jihanira, were left with him to keep him company and amuse him during these tedious years.

Aurung-zeb, who, for an Eastern potentate, was rather short of jewels, sent one day to his father to get some of his diamonds in order to adorn his turban which could boast of but one great ruby. The imprisoned Shah Jehan exclaimed in his wrath that he would break all his gems to atoms sooner than let his undutiful son touch one of them. He further intimated that the hammers were kept in readiness for this purpose. His daughter prevailed upon him to spare his glittering pebbles, and so the Koh-i-nÛr escaped an ignominious death.

The same princess offered a basin full of diamonds to Aurung-zeb when he came to see her in her palace prison after the demise of their father, and thus the Koh-i-nÛr came to adorn the brow of another emperor. For nearly a century after the Koh-i-nÛr dwelt tranquilly in Delhi, adding the lustre of its rays to the turbans of the Mogul empress until the year 1739.

Mohammed Shah, a feeble irresolute man, was appointed by Fate to hold the sceptre of India at the moment when she was to meet her fiercest foe. Thamas Kouli Khan, better known as Nadir Shah, had raised himself to the throne of Persia and, like all usurpers, felt the need of strengthening himself at home by a successful foreign war. He accordingly invaded India, at the head of a small force of hardy fighters, who, in the words of Nadir's grandiloquent Persian biographer, "threw the shadow of their sabers across the existence of their foes." In short they killed all before them and entered the Punjaub early in the year 1739, by pretty much the same route as that followed by Baber, the ancestors of the Moguls. But the Moguls were changed since the days of Baber. Mohammed Shah was completely defeated the moment he encountered Nadir Shah.

However, booty, rather than territory, was the object of the invader, so he did not dethrone Mohammed, but only levied tribute from him. The defeated Mogul gave an unheard-of quantity of jewels to Nadir Shah "who was at first reluctant to receive them, but at length consented to place the seal of his acceptance upon the mirror of his request." Such reluctance is very foreign to the generally rapacious and grasping character of Nadir Shah, and probably existed only in the flowery imagination of the writer of his life.

Having become aware that the Koh-i-nÛr was not among the treasures he had already sealed with his acceptance, Nadir Shah set about hunting for it, and at last a traitor was found who betrayed the secret of its hiding-place. A woman from the harem told the Persian king that the coveted diamond lay hidden in the folds of Mohammed's turban, which he never took off. Nadir accordingly one day invited his helpless friend, Mohammed, to exchange turbans with him in sign of their everlasting friendship. As in the time of the first free-will offering to Baber two centuries before, the Koh-i-nÛr was once again to pass from the conquered to the conqueror, from the weak to the strong.

It is said that Nadir Shah, overjoyed at the beauty of the gem he had thus cleverly filched from his ally, called it "Koh-i-nÛr" (i.e. the Rock of Light) the first time that he laid eyes upon it. If this is really a fact it is very singular. It is indeed strange that Jehangir, who was so fond of descriptive names compounded with Light, should have left it to the enemy of his race to endow one of his favorite diamonds with this poetical title. One would prefer to think that he had called his diamond the Rock of Light just as he had called his wife the Light of the World.

Upon the retreat of the conqueror the diamond was carried off with other booty. The Koh-i-nÛr therefore went from Delhi into Persia, and eventually it descended to Shah Rokh, the hapless son of the mighty Nadir Shah. But he who would wear the great diamond in peace must himself be strong, and Shah Rokh was weak. The wretched prince was unable to hold the throne, usurped by his father, against the usurpations of his own lieutenants. In 1751 he was dethroned and his eyes put out by Aga Mohammed, who endeavored by the most frightful tortures to force him to give up his diamonds and other treasures. Shah Rokh however, in spite of all, still retained the Koh-i-nÛr and his tormentor thereupon devised for him a diadem of boiling pitch and oil which was placed on his unhappy head. But even this expedient failed to make him give up his priceless gem.

A powerful neighbor, the lord of Kandahar, an old friend of his father, now came to Shah Rokh's assistance, put his tormentor to death, and once more placed the forlorn prince upon his tottering throne. In reward for this timely service, the Persian gave to his deliver the Koh-i-nÛr in whose rays his sightless eyes could no longer rejoice. Shortly afterwards he died from the effects of his injuries.

The Koh-i-nÛr was now in Afghanistan, the birthplace of Baber, while Baber's descendants on the throne of Delhi helplessly mourned its loss. It went from father to son safely enough for two generations in the land of the Afghans, and then its evil spell began to work once more.

In 1793, just after its rival, the Regent, had been lost and found in the midst of the French Revolution, the Koh-i-nÛr passed by inheritance into the hands of TaimÛr Shah, the king of Cabul. He left it along with his crown and his kingdom to Raman Shah, his eldest son. Raman had enjoyed the triple inheritance for only a few years when his brother rose in arms against him, and being successful, as most rebels are in Afghanistan, followed the old established etiquette of the Cabul royal family:—the messengers of Shah Shuja, the triumphant rebel, met their deposed sovereign on his way to the capital, and they put out his eyes by piercing the eyeballs repeatedly with a lancet.

This done, Shah Shuja sat himself down to enjoy the sweets of Asiatic power. The Koh-i-nÛr was not immediately his, however, for it was some time before it came to light, and then by the merest accident. An officer, happening to scratch his finger against something that protruded from the plaster in the walls of the prison of poor blinded Shah Raman, turned to examine the cause of the wound. To his amazement he discovered it to be the corner of the great diamond, which the unlucky prisoner fancied he had securely hidden away. Shah Shuja wore the Koh-i-nÛr in a bracelet during the brief splendor of his reign, and it was on his arm when English eyes first saw it.

Mountstuart Elphinstone, the pioneer of the weary throng of Englishmen who have trod the road to Cabul, thus speaks of the Koh-i-nÛr and its possessor to whom he was accredited as ambassador in 1812:

"At first we thought the Afghan was clad in an armour of jewels, but on closer inspection that appeared to be a mistake. His real dress consisted of a green tunic with large flowers in gold and precious stones over which were a large breast-plate of diamonds shaped like two flattened fleurs-de-lis, and an ornament of the same kind on each thigh; large emerald bracelets on the arms above the elbows and many other jewels in different places. In one of the bracelets was the Koh-i-nÛr, known to be one of the largest diamonds in the world. There were also some strings of very large pearls put on like cross belts, only looser."