Jewels: A Secret History by Victoria Finlay

Jewels: A Secret History by Victoria Finlay

Author:Victoria Finlay [Finlay, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Geology, History, Culture & Anthropology
ISBN: 9780345493354
Amazon: B000QCQ9U2
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2006-08-15T04:00:00+00:00


The Topkapi Dagger

Among the most famous emeralds in the Islamic world are three huge South American stones, set in the shaft of a dagger. It is called the Topkapi Dagger and is one of the most precious items in the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, although the fact that it is owned by Turkey rather than Tehran is just a matter of timing. In 1747 the newly commissioned dagger was one of the celebrity items in a chest of gifts sent from the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed I to Persia’s ruler Nadir Shah in a gesture of thanks for a nice new throne and some political favors. But the Ottoman ambassadors had hardly reached Baghdad when they heard that Nadir Shah had been assassinated in an uprising. So, with diplomatic pragmatism they turned back, taking the dagger with them.

Had it arrived at its intended destination it would most certainly have been included today in an even more spectacular collection: the Iranian royal treasury. Officially the Islamic Republic of Iran disapproves of its jewelry collection. “The Treasury on one hand depicts the culture and civilization of the Iranian people who have had an adventurous past,” explain the curators,51 “and on the other hand repeats the silent tears of oppressed people who worked hard [so that] the rulers could show off their arrogance and power with their gold and jewels.” It is a reminder, they say, of “a bloody and painful history—a history that should under no circumstances be repeated again.”

The collection is lodged in the deep vaults of the Melli Bank in Tehran, as collateral52 for the country’s monetary system. It is, however, despite the reservations of its owners, on public view—although security is tight. Visitors have to pass through several metal detectors and thick security doors before they can see, in the half-light, some of the greatest treasures from the Muzo and Chivor mines, dotted among some of the greatest treasures from everywhere else. “Holy schmoly!” exclaimed the young American visitor in front of me, and I had to agree: the collection is almost unrivaled in quantity and, sometimes, in quality. Most of the emeralds are “old mine” because nothing like them has been found since those first intensive years of South American mining. The collection includes crowns, thrones, snuffboxes, and bejeweled water pipes. One crown weighs more than five pounds and was used by the last shah, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. It contains 3,380 small diamonds, 2 sapphires, and 368 natural pearls, but its greatest gems are 5 large emeralds, totaling 199 carats. Muhammad Reza Pahlavi’s father, a soldier who had toppled the then shah in 1923, had designed it to resemble the crowns of the Persian Sassanid kings, who reigned from the third to the seventh century. He needed regalia to prove that he belonged in his new position and chose emeralds because they were the color both of Islam and of ancient kings.

One of the last exhibits is a golden globe. It is encrusted with 51,000 precious stones that



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