Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, ordered it to be re-cut as an oval brilliant by Coster Diamonds. In 1851, it went on display at the Great Exhibition in London, but the lacklustre cut failed to impress viewers. Originally, the stone was of a similar cut to other Mughal-era diamonds, like the Daria-i-Noor, which are now in the Iranian Crown Jewels. The diamond then changed hands between various factions in south and west Asia, until being ceded to Queen Victoria after the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849, during the reign of eleven-year-old emperor Maharaja Duleep Singh, who ruled under the shadow influence of the British ally Gulab Singh the 1st Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, who had previously possessed the stone. However, the first verifiable record of the diamond comes from the 1740s when Muhammad Maharvi notes the Koh-i-Noor as being one of many stones on the Mughal Peacock Throne that Nader Shah looted from Delhi. It was allegedly later acquired by the Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khalji during his invasion of southern India. There is no record of its original weight, but the earliest well-attested weight is 186 old carats (191 metric carats or 38.2 g). The diamond is currently set in the Crown of the Queen Mother.Īccording to legend, the stone was first mined in the Kollur Mine in India, during the period of the Kakatiya dynasty, who placed it in the Bhadrakali Temple in Warangal. It is part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom. The Koh-i-Noor ( / ˌ k oʊ ɪ ˈ n ʊər/ KOH-in- OOR from Persian for 'Mountain of Light'), also spelled Kohinoor and Koh-i-Nur, is one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, weighing 105.6 carats (21.12 g).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |