![]() ![]() ![]() Today, the diamond is on public display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. It was transferred to the Crown of Queen Mary in 1911, and finally to the Crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 1937 for her coronation. ![]() After she died in 1901, it was set in the Crown of Queen Alexandra. Victoria wore the stone in a brooch and a circlet. Since arriving in the UK, it has only been worn by female members of the family. īecause its history involves a great deal of fighting between men, the Koh-i-Noor acquired a reputation within the British royal family for bringing bad luck to any man who wears it. By modern standards, the culet (point at the bottom of a gemstone) is unusually broad, giving the impression of a black hole when the stone is viewed head-on it is nevertheless regarded by gemologists as "full of life". 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). According to legend, it was mined during the period of the Kakatiya dynasty, and placed in the Bhadrakali Temple in Warangal. The stone is a Golconda diamond, possibly mined in the Kollur Mine in India. The diamond is currently set in the Crown of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. 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). ![]()
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