Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Koh-I-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond

Koh-I-Noor: The History of the World's Most Infamous Diamond

Dalrymple, William
Anand, Anita

Paperback

JewelryIndian & South Asian HistoryJewelry

Publisher Price: $19.99

ISBN10: 1408888823
ISBN13: 9781408888827
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: Jan 17 2023
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.61
Height: 0.94 Width: 4.88 Depth: 7.64
Language: English

'Riveting. This highly readable and entertaining book ... finally sets the record straight on the history of the Koh-i-Noor' Tarquin Hall, Sunday Times
'Dynamic, original and supremely readable' Maya Jasanoff, Guardian

The first comprehensive and authoritative history of the Koh-i-Noor, arguably the most celebrated and mythologised jewel in the world.

On 29 March 1849, the ten-year-old maharaja of the Punjab was ushered into the magnificent Mirrored Hall at the centre of the great fort in Lahore. There, in a public ceremony, the frightened but dignified child handed over great swathes of the richest country in India in a formal Act of Submission to a private corporation, the East India Company. He was also compelled to hand over to the British monarch, Queen Victoria, perhaps the single most valuable object on the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i-Noor diamond. The Mountain of Light.

The history of the Koh-i-Noor may have been one woven together from gossip of Delhi bazaars, but it was to become the accepted version. Only now is it finally challenged, freeing the diamond from the fog of mythology that has clung to it for so long. The resulting history is one of greed, murder, torture, colonialism and appropriation told through an impressive slice of south and central Asian history. It ends with the jewel in its current controversial setting: in the crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, which was deemed too contentious to be used by Camilla, the Queen Consort, in King Charles's coronation.

Masterly, powerful and erudite, this is history at its most compelling and invigorating.

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