title: 9. The Curse of the Koh-i-Noor
author: Empire
contenttype: podcast
publication: Empire
published: 2022-09-28T21:00:00-04:00
sourceurl: https://pdst.fm/e/chrt.fm/track/A27C8C/traffic.megaphone.fm/NSR4943503268.mp3?updated=1703674473
word_count: 8039
If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of MPa, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to MPaClub at www.mpaPoduk.com This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills, fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate seat. According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsor job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast, terms and conditions apply. TaxX filing software and live tax experts can help small businesses easily knock out their taxes. Naturally, our experts can help you find deductions and credits for any size business. Itty bitty businesses, medium-sized, really big, mid-sized, small businesses, companies with zero employees, and mom and pop conglomerates. Yep, our tax experts can help all of them. Tax Act. Let's get them over with. This is your fix. I'm your host, Stasi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Steven because he's so evil. I do think he is misunderstood. You see everyone base consequences. It's intoxicating. The writers just know how to trick you. There's always a twist in this show. Tell me lies, the official podcast January 6th and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies January 13th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Hello and welcome to Empire with me and Eta Arnann. Me William Derrampu. Now, we left you on a cliff edge, I know that. But just for those of you who weren't there for our first episode, we are in the midst of a story of what seems to be a little diamond, but actually it is a story of empires, a story of many empires and how the symbol of power becomes this one diamond called the Cohenore diamond. So this is a story. If you missed, go back and listen because we are taking you on a journey from prehistory, from mythology, from Hindu scripture and we're going to take you all the way through the Mughal Empire, through the Persians, through Afghanistan, through the sea empire and we are going to plop you at the end on a cushion in the Tower of London. So that's our aim, that's what we're planning to do. So let's just go back to why this particular rock may be imbued with such supernatural powers. Because if you have heard of the Cohenore, you might have heard that it is a cursed diamond, you might have heard that there is a saying about it that only a woman can wear impunity and if a man wears it a mere human man, it will reduce him and his empire to dust. It is the reason that we don't have kings wearing it in this country, it has been worn by Queen Victoria, but then only by Queen consoles, never by the reigning male monarch. I don't know, we sort of try to work out whether it's because spouses are dispensable. What happens to them? It's fine next, but the story perhaps, although as William says, there's so little factual evidence, but it could be because it is conflated with something called the Simonicogen. So in Hinduism, there are texts, and those are you listening in India, forgive me, I was just, you know, it's stuff that you know already. But in the piranhas, in the Vedas, there is a story about the sun god, Suria, who comes down to earth. He meets a king, a mortal king, who is dazzled, who can't see him and says, look, you're too bright, you're too shiny, I can't look at you, can you appear in a more reasonable form? So he, this god, Suria, the god, sun god, shrinks himself down into a stone, or separates his brilliance into a stone, which is the Simonicogen, and then the king can look upon him. And he gives him the stone. He says, you know what? The fact that you wanted to look at me, the fact that that was important, the fact you did it with such a piety here is the stone. You look after it. Well, this king, whose name was Satyajid, he then dies eventually. They're happy, nothing bad happens to him, but he passes it onto his brother, and this is where this cursed idea of the Simonicogen, they become really joined fused together, because his brother goes on a little trip into the forest. You know, I mean, arguably not the cleverest thing in the world to go into a deep dark forest with your most valuable gem around your neck, but he does. I mean, there are many, many bad choices made in the common laws of life. This is one of the first potentially, but he goes in and he's attacked by a lion who eats him, and the lion trots off with the Simonicogen, it's mouth, and he's then attacked by the king of the bears who rips him to shreds. And then when you're a man of a... It's a jolly, I mean, this is, you know, it's not proving itself to be quite lucky so far. And then after the bear king has it, then Christian gets involved. Christian is accused of having stone in it when the stone disappears. For those of you in Britain who don't know, Christian is one of the pantheon of Hindu gods. He looks blue, he plays a flute, has peacock feathers in his... And he's quite mischievous. So it wasn't beyond reason that he could have been responsible for his disappearance. So he's sent off to prove his innocence and he has big battle with the bear god and gets the Simonic. It gives it to his father-in-law. Oh, yes. And he's given a wife, the owner's daughter, and he's married to Krishna. Is it the king of the other nations? The other nations killed by robbers who've come and steal the German. Krishna has to get it back a second time. Many Hindus have brought up with these stories from childhood. And it's as much part of people's knowledge of myth as the stories of the shepherds and the stable in Bethlehem, out of Christians. Or there is this belief in India that diamonds can be very, very unlucky. Yes. And that with a supreme hero, diamonds are okay. But with a lesser mortal, so Krishna for example would have been okay with the... They were the naughty gems. I mean, the Spanelles and the rubies were the nice gems, but the diamonds are the naughty gems. Diamonds are problematic. And of course, this may just reflect the reality that if you're wondering around with diamonds, people are quite likely to get any period of history to knock you on the head and pinch the whether it's the tube today or whether it's the jungles of Uttar Pradesh in centuries BC. Now, we were previously on this conversation. Previously on this conversation with him. We had left these fine people in Calat. It's the year is 1740-ish. Calat is on the border of Afghanistan and Iran. And the diamond has been taken from poor old hapless Mahamid Shah Rangila, who poor Mahamid Shah Rangila, who is an Egypt, but is a sweet Egypt, but isn't Egypt. And here it is now gone to Nathir Shah, who is a much more austere person. It's still though, isn't it, on the peacock throne? It's still the head of the peacock of the peacock throne. So the Kauinau is sitting on top of the peacock on the top of the peacock throne. And it's sitting between Afghanistan and Iran. Nathir Shah is the new power on the block. He's knocked out the Moghlempa, which has been the biggest power for nearly two centuries. And having taken all the wealth away, it's like extinguishing the boiler of the Moghlempa. You could imagine taking a mirror and throwing it out a third story window. It hits the ground. It smashes into a million parts. That's what happens to India at this point. Every small town, John Paul, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Delhi, Agra, Tangil, and so on, becomes effectively an independent city state. Meanwhile, the Big Empire is to the north. Nathir Shah is sitting in Kalat. And in this one fortress, he has the entire loot that the Moghles gathered over two centuries from all of India. It's just sitting in one fort in boxes. And one of the first things he does is he takes the Kauinau off the peacock throne, off the head of the peacock. And he straps it to something called a bazoubun, which is like an armlet. And he wears it as a double act on his left hand. He has the Kauinau on the right, the Timur Ruby. And so for him, these two stones, one red, one gorgeously brilliant diamond, are sitting there flashing on either arm, the symbol of his conquest. Because the Timur diamond is a kind of Persian stone. And the Kauinau is the ultimate Indian stone. But there's something entirely masculine about this. At the time, it's not that women wore jewelry. These are rocks of conquest sitting on the bicep of a man who wants to flex. It is the ultimate flex. And that's what these huge gems represented in those days. They wouldn't have been worn by women. They would have been worn by men. They're symbols of sovereignty. Women did wear jewels, but these kind of jewels, these mega-forners of jewels is worn by men and it's worn by kings. And in India, in fact, we didn't say this earlier, but it's a very important point. In the early Indian courts, you have a strict hierarchy of what gems, what rank of person can wear. So if you're an accountant, even if you're a rich accountant, you're not allowed to wear a diamond in public. No, you wear pearls, but that's fine. You can't wear anything else. And it's strictly tied to your rank. And often in Indian courts, people were almost nothing except stones. And they were an indication of your rank and who you were and what you were. So when you sit there like Nardishar with the Timur Ruby, the greatest of all rubies on one arm and the Koei Naur, one of the largest diamonds on the other, it's a statement. It's a statement of, like, come on over here if you think you're hard enough. I mean, to put it in modern parlance. It is a sandwich board of strength, which is, these are the empires that have fallen before me. And for a long time, no one is strong enough to come out. And Nardishar, having seen off the moguls, goes around Central Asia and Iran, seeing off. He takes on the Russians, he takes on the Ottoman Turks, the two great powers of the day, does very well against both. Extends his empire down to Baghdad. And in the end, he's brought down not by any of his foreign enemies but by his own clan, because he's become basically a psycho. He's nuts. I mean, this is not overstating the point. So we were talking about this so-called cursed notion of the Koei Naur that it corrupts. No man is fit to wear it. That's the ancient curse, as opposed to say. But this is a man who's a very capable leader who commands great respect, who suddenly becomes a paranoid maniac, who starts looking at those people who are loyal to him, who have done nothing wrong, even if they are blood relatives, and all he sees is his enemies everywhere. And he literally, you know, this is used as a sort of phrase, but he builds pyramids and skulls. He genuinely builds pyramids and skulls of his enemies, all over Central Asia. He molds them into nice dreams. To really make you misrangela more, doesn't it, really? And when the moment I think when everyone realizes that he's totally lost it is when there's an assassination attempt and a bullet hits the saddle of his horse and one bullet hits the saddle, one bullet hits the horse and the horse dies, but he's fine. But after this, he's constantly looking for who is traitorous, who've taken the pot of the atom, and he assumes wrongly that it's his son. And he has his son blinded and has his son's eyes brought him on a platter. So this is so again, I mean, we talk about these things being games of theories, but I think there are lots of stories from the actual Koehnoor history that have informed the folklore in Game of Thrones. I mean, I'm absolutely certain of this. Well, come to a classic. But this is a man who, so did he watch his son being eye gouged, or he just gave the order? But then I think he did ask for the eye of people. He'd bring me the eyeballs of my son, and his son had done... Oh, no, no, his son had done nothing to him. Nothing, well. He wasn't a sponsor of the assassination attempt. Wow. And this is the thing that sends him over the edge, because when the eyeballs are brought to him on a plate, he looks at them, then he bursts into tears. Yes, because his eyeballs are looking over going, Papa. It's like, she's so hot. And he says, what is a father? What is a son? Yeah, we're not that. That's not what I did either of that. Not ideally, but he can safely say not that. But he gets his, doesn't he? Because so he's a middle-aged man at this point. So he's a middle-aged man. He's conquered the greatest... He's taken on in battle, not one, but three of the greatest ones. So you would... And you know, is he a happy man? Well, whether he's happy or not, his family are definitely not happy. As you can imagine, he's going around blindly there. And eventually there is a plot to do him in. And one night he is in his tent when his cousin's storm in, and he's in bed with a concubine. And they take a sash at him. And I think they cut off one hand and he fights on with the other hand and a sword. And he puts up a very decent last resistance in his tent before he's cut down by all his enemies. OK. There then erupts the greatest night of Mayhem in Persian history. Because the whole army hears that he's been killed and they go for the jewels. The 8,000 wagons of mogulute are still sitting in crates or dotted around the treasuries. Yeah, why wouldn't you? And no one is... No one is... God is... It's a complete power back, you mean scale. And particularly, obviously, they go for the peacock threads. The peacock threads are sitting there. The man who sat in it is now dead. And so all these soldiers are going at it with their benets or their knives... Hacking it to pieces. And then she... And I witnessed a count. A Scottish traveler called James Bailey Fraser, interviewed as an old man. One of the men who was a young man was there with a knife-pricing pearls out of the peacock throne. And there's murder, there's Mayhem. But while all this is going on, the head of the bodyguard who's a man called Ahmet Khan Durani. And Ahmet Khan has been implored by the chief wife of Nader who's a very clever cookie called Chuki. Chuki says, protect me this one night. Protect me and my women. And I will give you the Koei Nō. So the Koei Nō, which presumably was on a bazooka maybe took it off when he went to sleep. But she would know where it is. And it's very plausible. She's got it. And this sounds... We have this from two or three sources, so it's not nonsense. And it's entirely plausible that a woman who now has no longer got the protection of her husband is going to be seen as loot. It's going to be... I mean, the way in which it's still unfortunately the way of the world today, but rape is used as a weapon of conquest. Christina Lam's done this wonderful book on this. Excellent book, about it. So Chuki is quite clever to say, look, I will give you the most valuable gem and take it but you've got to save my life. And Ahmishad Durani is one of... is a man who owes everything to Nadeh Shah. He was... Nadeh Shah first entered Afghanistan on his way to Delhi. Ahmishad Durani is in prison in Kandahar, allegedly for pickpocketing. Wow. And Nadeh gets him out, realizes his qualities, promotes him and he's now the head of the bodyguard. And on this occasion he's failed to protect. Not this. But he protects the women. And in the morning, after this night of May, you can just imagine it, that all these soldiers hacking at these boxes... Which is sort of... I mean, I sort of see blood and gems skittering across the floor. Literally, that's the case. Literally, they're all by the light of flares and you know, you know, bonfires and things going up in flames. And in the morning, having formed a ring, one imagines maybe around the harry more. However, they're protected the women. They ride off with them to Kandahar and with them, they have the COVID. Koean or diamond. And then they have a stroke of luck, because on their way, just before they reach Kandahar, they meet the salary train. All the money that's going to pay the soldiers who are still rioting and running a mock falls into the hands of Amish Hadar. He says, well, it's having the Koean orn and a handful of gems that he's taken from the tent. He actually has the entire years pay of the army. And this wasn't planned. This was a stroke. But you're just saying the hand. These two things basically act as the capital, which he then sits down in Kandahar and brings together the chiefs of what we now call Afghanistan and forms for the first time a country in Afghanistan. Right. Now, we should at this point say that we do have a very good idea of what the diamond look like, because so we've mentioned that the thing in the Tower of London is much smaller and it is entirely transformed from what it was at the beginning. And at the time that Durani has it, I mean, you've said before, I think it's a really excellent description. It's like Arthur's seat. Isn't it? It's very flat on the top. The big dome on top and it goes down to these kind of small tail, if you like. It's a shape like a tadpole. It is shaped like a tadpole. And it's got these sort of like great sort of, they're crudely slashed sides if you like. If you like. They're sloped like big ski slopes. But it's enormous. It's big. It's huge. That's a duck egg. I mean, what is the heritage? I always lose count to the carrots on there. For memory, 200 and 6. 276. Yeah, 276 is the number that sticks in my head as well. That is huge. And if you think that, you know, most people have one carrot dime and say they're very, very lucky, 276 carrots in this rock. This is a crucial moment. So we've seen how it was possibly part of ancient India. We don't know for sure. It's certainly a part of Mogul India. It's moved to Nadia Shah, which is a whole new empire. And now we're beginning another chapter, which is the creation of Afghanistan. And in the week that follows, the assassination of Nadia Shah and the hacking apart of the peacock throne, Amish Hadrani using the Koehnoor as collateral effectively. He summons all the chiefs of what will become Afghanistan. Afghanistan up to this point has been part of other empires. It's been part of the Safavid empire, a bit of the Mogul empire, a bit of the Uzbek empire, and so on. But for the first time, you're going to state which forms with roughly the borders of modern Afghanistan. And for now, this was in the news this day was in the news last year, because when the Taliban seized the arg, the palace of the Afghans, where Hamid Khazai had ruled from and the Afghani, there was a famous picture that was in every newspaper in the world of them sitting on Afghani's desk. Now behind that desk was a photograph of this moment. Behind this desk was a picture of this moment, a painting of a Sufi giving Ahmad Shah the right to rule Afghans, giving him his blessing. And this is the moment that the Afghan state has found it. So this is why, as well as being the diamond for many Indians, it's also the diamond for many Iranians because of Nadisha, and the diamond for Afghans, because it's there at the moment the Afghan state is started. Okay, so this explains why always the emotions of fever pitch whenever we've toured with this talk. I mean, we have literally, we've done a Facebook talk, William and I, which started off on one timeline, we were talking to India and then Pakistan joined it. So India has worked our diamond, give us back our diamond, you British give us back our diamond, then the Pakistanis came and saying, oh, diamond, it was from Lahore, then Afghanistan joined it, then the Iranians pitched it, and it was quite the free for all. So look, so does it make him happy? So the Havishar of all the people that have the Kaurinor have, well, actually there's several people that have incredibly gruesome birds because of the Kaurinor, but Havishar is one of them. He then conquers quite a lot of Nadisha's territory, he conquers quite a lot of India, but even as he's getting kings and nobles to submit to him around the whole region, his face is being eaten up by a cancer. And at some stage he decides it's so revolting that he has to cover it, like Robocop, one of those movies, he covers it with a sheath of silver studded with many things. Like a phantom of the opera, kind of thing, yeah. But even that doesn't do the job, because apparently it wasn't to one, I win this account, Maggots dropping out from underneath. Sorry, I didn't want to laugh at this. I do know where I'm laughing. I know, I don't listen. I'm not a psychopath, it's not that I find Maggots dropping out in the smith. It's amazing. I'm just thinking back to when we wrote the book together, because this is all, you know, the stories are all contained in the book that we wrote. Meanwhile, we shouldn't forget, you mentioned Game of Thrones. Meanwhile, the Persians are still looking for the Kuri dog. They don't, we know that it's gone off with Arbishar Girardy, these guys in Kantaar, but the various contenders for the Persian throne who are still slugging it out on the Persian border. And one of the people that rise to the top is a former unit of Nardashar, and he is busy trying to find the diamond. And he calls in one of Nardashar's children, and basically he straps him to a chair and torches him, because he's convinced that he has it. And he has many other gems, but he doesn't have the going off because it's without Maggots Girardy. And when finally, having extracted these other gems, but failed to get the going off and convinced himself that this man is hiding the great secret, he ties him to a chair and he gets his men to make a crown of paste, which he puts in. And he then pours molten gold over the head of the son of Maggotsar. Which isn't direct seen from game, but thrones. Yes, so, okay, so the reason I need to explain why I was laughing, I feel that I need to... This is a new sound of your character, he told you. I'm kind of witchy-cackle in the background. It is because, and it started to do a story, but then quite rightly, there was more gawd to go. When you're not competed against each other, we started calling it gawd wars. You definitely won. We were not even there. We're not even too much of a bit yet, but it was quite something. William would be an India suddenly pop up on my phone and say, I've just found this man and you sitting down. Maggotsar, out of his face. And I'll see you on Maggots. And I will raise you. I won't tell you what I'm going to raise you because that's coming up in a bit. But yes, okay, so... So, Maggotsar... I'm a transgender, I need... One of the big battles he fights famous to everyone in India, 1761, he fights the battle in Panipat. He defeats the Marathas. Marathas, look at if they can take over the entire Indian subcontinent and suddenly we're going to have Hindu rulers ruling India again. It doesn't happen because in 1761, Amit Shraddharani massacres the entire Maratharani who fight very bravely but hopelessly against the swivel guns of Amit Shraddharani. And not only does he have this horrible end, but he leaves chaos for his sons. So his successor is a man called Timoshar, rather than helpfully for a man wanting to conquer the world as a dwarf. Which does that... Teeny-tiny Timoshar. Teeny-tiny Timoshar. Right, so think of it. In having got a lot of these jewels, then makes himself an enormous jeweled sort of step ladder to get on tour. Maybe extracted from the former mask, jeweled mask of his father. And he rules a fraction of the empire that his father drew. And then you get his son, who's a guy called Shashu Jurumul. Who I riff in a Thai book about, called Return of a King, which maybe we'll come back to. We must, we must do a whole opposite of that. Because it is fabulous, that book is fabulous. But just in a nutshell, Shashu Jur, you have very unkindly, and I can see why you do it. But there are pictures of Shashu Jurumul. And you have described him very seriously. Gimli. He does the thing. Like Gimli, the dwarf, and so on. He does the reagan. And so what is the pattern? I mean, there is a parallel in modern India politics to the decline of a great dynasty. I don't know, from Neru to Dhirah to Rajiv to Rahul. Okay. He's rather similar. You may say that I couldn't possibly comment. But just so tell us about, so Shashu Jurumul, apart from looking a little bit like you should be hacking away at a mountain side, what is his personality? So Shashu Jurumul is actually a remarkable guy. And remind us what era we're talking here. So we're now talking, I suppose, 1800. And his elder brother has briefly become the Shah. And instant everyone turns on him, and he is imprisoned in a small fortress at the top of the Khabibasi. He gets caught in a blizzard and he comes into this border fortress and asks for shelter. And now, you know, just it's only 20 years since his father, who ruled the entire region was the all-powerful guy. But now so much anarchy has broken out so much chaos that when he goes into take shelter, the Shinwari tribe capture him. And he hides the Koei Nō in the crack in his prison cell. Yeah, wonderful. And I think previous to this, knowing that things were a bit dodgy, he hid the Timur Ruby under a rock where he'd gone for his ablutions. In a river? Yeah, just under a rock and in a river. And so the two greatest gems in all of us in the prison cell of ones in a river at this point. So Shashuji's brother Shazaman has secreted the Koei Nō in a crack in his prison cell. He's earlier hidden the Timur Ruby in a rock. Under a rock? Under a rock in a river. That's right. And when Shashuji comes into power and eventually to avenge him, the first thing he does is to send out such parties looking for these two stones. And one, the Koei Nō is found on a muller's desk as a paperweight. Being used to keep the sermons from playing away. So this is Mōvi doesn't have a clue? Mōvi doesn't have a clue. Mōvi is a pyrr-cell man. Doesn't know what he's called. Doesn't know diamonds. Literally using the paperweight on his desk. And meanwhile, the Timur Ruby has been found by a young student who went bathing and that's also retrieved. So Shashuji gets his two stones back. But again, everything goes badly wrong. He forms an alliance with the new power on the block, which is the East India Company, but it's too late to save him. And he shortly ends up in a prith and sail in Kashmir. His wife, who's a remarkable woman called Wafa Begum, then goes to the other new power on the block who is the head of the Sikhs' rangit Singh. So we've just had an introduction to the Sikh Empire, the British Empire. I do know what, let's take a break. AI is incredible. They can teach you how to fry an egg and even write a poem, pirate style. But it knows nothing about your work. Slackbot is different. It doesn't just know the facts. It knows your schedule. It can turn a brain store into a brief, and it doesn't need to be taught. Because Slackbot isn't just another AI. It's AI that knows your work as well as you do. Visit slack.com forward slash meatslackbot to learn more. So just before the break, we had introduced Rangit Singh, who's quite a character. Particularly in the North. He's a figure that every Sikh knows backwards, but lots of people I think won't. So, I mean, ethnically, I'm Punjabi, and the Punjabi is a place in the north of India. Rangit Singh was a barren, a miscellular. So he is supposedly quite, he's a noble but not really that noble. He is brave, though. So at the time that all those shenanigans are going on with people gouging out each other's eyes, this is a man who's born in 1780s. By 1800, it's a young man. We estimate, they really wrote down dates properly in those days. But as a young man, he rides out from his village across the north of India, and he starts to conquer everything in his path. He starts conquering first of all small villages, then bigger cities, then Lahore itself. And he starts to unite these people much as Amishadid in Afghanistan. These different tribes and missiles together into one kingdom, which becomes the Sikh Empire. Shah Zaman, the man who hid the Koehnaur in his prison cell, when he's leaving Lahore, he asks Rangit Singh to help him get his cannons out of the mud. Exactly. So this is a man who has now got power and authority, not only that. He shows the Indians, the Indians side of the mountain range, that we can keep the Afghans out. So almost immediately that he draws this doctor to line around his empire. Before that, the Afghans would regularly just come over the mountains, raid, take whatever they want. Come down, raid the land, go back. They'll go back. But he says no more. This is not going to happen anymore in my kingdom. And he unifies a really very wealthy part of the world. So even today, the north of India, Punjab is known as the bread basket of India, because it has the fields, it has the irrigation. It's called Punjab is the land of the five rivers. So it's one of the most irrigated places in India, even to this day produces the majority of wheat, for example, in all of Asia. So there's Ranjit Singh, the Vaffa Begum, the lady that you've just referred to, who is desperate to get Shashuja out of Kling. Goes and appeals to the man, the enemy across the border, who is Ranjit Singh. As I said, listen, you've got to get him out, get him out, get him out, get him out. And he says why should I? Quite reasonably. What's in it for me? And the Vaffa Begum says, I will give you the Kowinor diamond. And he says, well, what's that worth? And she famously gives this wonderful analogy that if you throw a rock up into the air as high as you can, and then throw it to the left as hard as you can, and then throw it to the right as hard as you can, and fill that entire space with gold, that is the value of the Kowinor diamond. And in fact, it's quite significant that she has to explain this. Yeah. Because at this point, the Kowinor is not the big famous stone that it is now. And also, he's not a man who cares about jewels. I mean, let's, you know, also, you know, the character of this man, Ranjit Singh, unlike the Mughals who liked to wear their wealth. He comes from the Sikh faith, which is, you know, comparatively new in India, and they are like the Protestants. They've come in, they're not for idolatry, they're not for big temples, they're not for showy-showiness. He himself just wears white clothes. He doesn't sit on his own throne. He has something called the Golden Godi, which is a golden throne, but he doesn't sit on it. He leaves it empty for Guru Nanak, who's the spiritual leader of the Sikh tradition. So he's not really that bothered, but he's bothered about this one, because this one is the stone of power. And in due course, and this is why he's important to our story, he's the guy he wears it on his own. All the others like Nadisha and Amitshad Durani had worn it along with the Timur rebubes. So Rafa Begum promises him this rock, and he says, all right, I will help. And he does, doesn't he? I mean, he does go and help. He invades Kashmir and takes Kashmir, so he adds Kashmir to his king. His portfolio. And springs Shashuja from prison, so he's brought back to Lahore, and they then sit down and they face each other. And Raju Singh says, so where's the diamond? So where's the diamond? You promise me the diamond. And Shashuja says, famously, in diplomacy, this happens a lot, diamond, what diamond? I don't know what you're talking about. And he says, your wife, your wife told me, if I sent men and spilled blood and coin to get you out of there, you'd give me the diamond. And he says, don't know anything about that, Governor. Sorry, no idea. So Raju Singh, according to Shashuja's memoir, this is something which is interesting. Yeah, yeah. Something which is not in the Sikhs, or this is obviously, which Shashuja very much puts into his own memoirs. He says that he gets Shashuja's son and torches him. In front of his father. In front of him. And till he hands over. And the Sikhs also say, he convinces him. He convinces him. And actually, a deal is a deal and he should hand it over. This stone is not something that brings out the best of anyone at any point in history. Really not. Really not. So the diamond is handed over finally. This is very uncomfortable meeting at a place, Gumbu Barakha Valley, which is still, I've been to it in Lahore, where Shashuja's been lodged. And they sit, the two men sit facing each other in silence for 20 minutes until eventually a imagine thing makes us sort of just just say, where the hell is this, does it? Yeah, enough now. And Shashuja flicks his fingers and gets a unique to bring a dirty cloth and it's placed in the middle of the room. I love that detail of it being in a dirty cloth, which just shows the descent of, you know, I'm handing it over, but I'm handing it over. But we'll be all well. This puts it in the middle and the next thing has to reach forward and pick it up. So what happens next is really, I think, very significant, because here is a man, now just to describe Ranjit Singh for you at this time. He looks older than he is. He's got a white beard if you look at sort of court paintings from the time. He's only got one eye because he's had childhood smallpox, we think. That is, Rob Tim of the Vision of One Eye. He walks with a limp. He's got a pop marked face. He's not beautiful. But he loves to surround himself with incredibly beautiful gorgeous, almost compensated for that. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, so, but he takes the diamond, as you say, and he wears it on its own, on his arm. And at this point, you know, this diamond is now really saddled with the reputation that it brings down empires. It brings down strong men. And the way he wears it is almost as if he's thumbing his nose at all powers, temporal and supernatural. He wears just very simple white pajamas with this one stone on his arm. And this is the point that it first enters the... Your British notes. The British notes. Yeah, the little glint of the diamond catches their eye. And from this period, you get the first references in British law. To this amazing diamond. And anyone that goes to sea round, it's saying hopes to see it. Well, he shows it. I mean, the thing about this diamond with him is that wherever he goes in his kingdom and the north, you know, people talk about King of the North and keep coming to Game of Thrones, I'm not obsessed. But it's just, you know, he's the real deal. So whenever he tours around, he takes his diamond with him. It's like, you know, it's the thing that everybody turns out to come and see. The way in which he transports and protects the diamond is also extraordinary. So his master of the Thorsacana, the treasury is a man called Beliram, Mr. Beliram. And Beliram is charged with protecting the stone. Protecting the stone is if it's a member of the royal family, it's that serious. So the diamond goes out behind Rengiit Singh in a caravan of... Sometimes, you know, there are descriptions of 40 camels. Each with identical paniers. Everything looks the same. Both all the baskets on all the camels look identical, but only one of them has the colonel in it and only Beliram in the entire kingdom knows which one it is. When he sleeps, he has it and other baskets changed to him, his body, so that if somebody comes, they can have to rifle through numerous baskets to try and find where's Wally, where is the diamond? And in the meantime, he can spring up and slit their throats. So you know, this is a man who has perhaps the most onerous task. But Rengiit Singh, wherever he holds his derbars or his governmental meetings, he makes sure he has this diamond strapped to his bicep against the absolute epitome of masculinity. And sometimes it's just kept in... Is it called Govengar? The imperial fortress treasury, which Rengiit Singh puts all his treasure in and it's still there, it's an incredible sort of blockhouse. And it's the strongest place in the realm. So just to give a picture of what's happening at this point. So by now, the East India Company... And the early 1800s, just by the way to the East India Company, which is a commercial company, it's not a British government. It's a public limited company. It's got shareholders, it's got boarded directors, and it's run out of a relatively small office in the city of London. Leidenholstery. Leidenholstery. Yeah. And through... In the chaos which followed the claps of the Moghlempa, which itself followed the fact that Nadia Shah had taken all the money away. And there was no money left to pay the soldiers, the civil servants. The East India Company, a corporation, has gobbled up the whole of India. And it's done it in the most sort of bizarre way. There are only... At the time of the battle, Placid, which is the first big battle when the the company really gets going. At that point, there are only 35 employees in the head office in Leidenholstery, which itself is only five windows wide. It's a tiny building. And in India, there are only 250 white civil servants. But what they do is that they borrow money from the Indian bankers, particularly the Marwari Jains, and of all of them, a group called the Jugger sets. And the Jugger sets and the other bankers realize that these guys actually speak the same language as them, although they want to be feeding Englishmen and the others of vegetarian Indians. They understand the business of interest rates, commercial contracts, and they may loot, they may plunder, they may do all sorts of... But they do do a capital return. They do a capital return on time in full, and they don't argue. Well, often, Indian rulers hang up bankers by their feet and if they ask the money back. So these guys say they may be awful, they may be foreigners, they may be heathen. But we can literally do business with these guys. But we can do business with them. And they provide the capital with which the East India Company buys an Indian army. So they recruit sea poids who are Indian soldiers, train them up as mercenaries, and by the time that the Koeh Nora is back with Ranjit Singh, the East India Company private army in India is 200,000 strong when the British army is only 100,000. A private company in the office in London controls an army twice the size of the British army. And if you look at sort of Indian sources at the time, they describe these armies of the East India Company as just sweeping across the land like Locus, just taking everything in their path. And that's what they've done. They've now controlled the whole, either directly through conquest or by alliance. They control all of India south of the South of the river. But they can't go north of the river. But they're Ranjit Singh as such. He won't let them and he also, so the Sikhs are a martial race. It's part of their identity that you are a man you must fight. So just a little bit of background on sea. This is your loot. Well, my loot, indeed. So Hinduism has a caste system as most of you will know. But when the Sikhs come along and I describe this sort of that Indian Protestants, they say enough of this. We're not going to have caste division anymore. Everybody will be reborn the same. So whatever you were before, now your surname will be Singh. If you are a man, Singh means lion. And if you are a woman, you will be core, which means every woman is a princess. So in one fell swoop, that's it, the end of caste. They also say you will be a warrior saint. So that means you will be pious, but you must fight. You must learn how to fight. So that's also the part of the very nature of being a Sikh. And that's for men and women, which is interesting. And one of the things that allowed these India Company to defeat all these Indian armies so quickly, is the fact that there's been a military revolution in Europe. You have horse artillery, muskets, bandits, all this stuff. And using this new technology, these Indian Company, just 50 years, has taken over the whole of India. One office in London takes over the richest country in the world, India is producing about 40% of the world's GDP at this point. And they've been taken over by the East India Company because of this technique. What does Ranjit Singh do? He may have the most macho warriors in North India, but he needs the technology. And so what he does is he gets Napoleon's generals. And a whole load of ex-Napoleonic soldiers and officers to train his army. His army is stuffed full of European mercenaries. So you have all these strange, then, like General Avertarbley, who is an ex-Napoleonic general, shipped over from Sicily to Rampashava. What is the name of the tartan general? Alexander Gardner. Alexander Gardner, who will figure large in a while in this story. He is literally, he wears a tartan salva kemi. And a tartan turban, I've seen pictures of a tartan turban on him as well. So there we are. So Ranjit Singh is able to repel. Oh, actually, they don't even try. They don't even try it across the satellite because they know if they do, they'll be able to do it. Absolutely, that's extraordinary. It builds up this amazing, rather than like the Russians today in Ukraine, they have a massive artinemian vulture. Heavy gun vulture. And Ranjit Singh starts these artillery factories in Lahore. And so the British know that if they try and cross the satellite, they're going to be met by this hail of lead. So from sort of around 1800 to 1839, this is a man who has unassailable power in the North. Nobody can challenge him, cross him, no one does. It doesn't mean they haven't got their eye on it. Especially the British have got their eye on it. And also interesting that they don't just have an eye on his kingdom, but they also have an eye on the diamond. Because the diamond they recognise, that propaganda value of that means power, that means power to all Indians. I mentioned earlier this guy, James Bailey Freyser, who's actually my wife's ancestor. He has a brother called William Freyser. William Freyser leaves probably the first report about the Koehnoor of any British letter writer. These are the company sends a mission to Shashuja just before he's toppled. And they see Shashuja wear the Koehnoor in Pashawa. And from that point, everyone who turns up at the Punjab is reporting on this diamond. And the Brits are longing to get their hands on the Punjab, and they're longing to get their hands on the diamond, but they can't because of all this such a thing. And they basically have to wait until Ranjit Singh gets older and dies. Well, it gets old. I mean, even when he's old and in fact, they still don't. But when he dies in 1839, that's their chance. And that might be actually a good place to leave it. Thanks very much for listening to Empire. We're going to be back with more murder, mayhem, the rise and fall. Great empires. So do join us again. Goodbye for me, William Durhampool. Goodbye for me, Anita Arnett.