As extracted and digested from diverse accounts
by Louis Zara
Tavernier is the great authority on the fabulous jewels of India. On this subject there is no one quite like him in all the literature of travel. His accounts of his six long voyages into the East
(1630 -1668) give us the only reliable information we have on some of the most celebrated diamonds in history.
He did not begin to write until he was nearly seventy and, while he furnished a Baedeker for the travelers who might come after him, he revealed nothing of his personal life, not of his family or friends not of his likes or dislikes, not even of his profits or losses.
We can imagine the remarkable treasures he saw, the hundreds of cities, towns, palaces and courts he visited, the many rivers, deserts and mountains he crossed. We can see the Kings and the Khans, the Shahs and the Emirs with whom he had dealings. We get only the palest image of the man himself.
The two portraits available show a huge, portly figure heavy with years and honors. This is the only Tavernier we know. The curious youth he must have been, the daring wanderer he became, the courageous merchant, the enterprising trader in jewels, these we have to reconstruct from random intimations in the memoir of his “Travels.”
It is worth the effort. For he was more than a jeweler. Jewels absorbed hardly one-tenth of his energies, and then only in his penultimate years. He was the merchant extraordinary, the traveling salesman without peer, an international buying office shuttling between kingdoms.
In four decades he covered 60,000 leagues by land and by sea and, when he died in his eighty-fifth year, he was still on the road and in a foreign land
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was born in Paris in 1605; exact month and day unknown. “I came into the world with a desire to travel,” he wrote nearly three score and ten years later. Three Taverniers, his father Gabriel and two brothers, Nicolas and Melchior, had arrived in France from Antwerp in 1575. They were Protestants and fugitives from religious persecution. Melchior, a cartographer, became an engraver and printer to the king. Gabriel, Jean-Baptiste’s father, was the merchant.
They lived in an atmosphere that was hugely exciting to a growing-up boy. The highly decorative maps-“from which I never could keep off my eyes”-were popular for the walls of studies and libraries, though of little value aboard ship. Even the portolano charts with their simply plotted lines, were poorly understood by most seamen. The youth, however, often roved in his fancies to those distant lands with their exotic names.
We do not know when he first left home, nor for what reason, whether to represent his father or boldly to seek his own fortune. “My first sally was into England,” he declared. If, as alleged, his journeys started when he was fifteen, he wandered the next ten years across the breadth of the continent.
From England he went to Flanders and the United Provinces. In Amsterdam, “the great concourse of strangers that crowded thither from all parts of the world” excited him. He learned quickly to be comfortable on alien soil where every face was foreign and every word was strange. He reveled in the experience. Always another city beckoned. On to Frankfurt, Augsburg and Nuremberg
He thrilled to “the noise of armies” marching into Bohemia to recapture Prague. Gravitating toward travelers of rank he must have ingratiated himself, for the Count of Arc took him off to Vienna where, for four and a half years, he was a page in the household of the Viceroy of Hungary. “I spoke indifferently well the languages most necessary and most generally spoken,” he recorded. Those languages brought him preferment; his bearing, personality and native shrewdness rocketed him far above the modest station in which he had been born.
As interpreter for the Prince of Mantua, he was present at the coronation of the King of Hungary and Bohemia. In the train of the French envoy, he traveled to Venice. At the siege of Mantua he was struck in the left breast by two bullets; his cuirass saved him from injury. That was his only soldiering. Rome, Naples, Florence, Pisa, Leghorn, Genoa and Marseilles-all these he visited before he returned to Paris.
Soon he was journeying through the cantons of Switzerland; then to Ulm, Strasbourg, Munich, Nuremberg again and Prague. Next he was on the road to Breslau and Cracow and to the court of King Sigismund in Warsaw. He was at Ratisbon for the crowning of Ferdinand III as King of the Romans. He halted at Freiburg, the mining center. In Dresden he visited the treasure-rooms of the palace. In whose company? For what reason? His memoir is silent.
Already he had been three times to Prague and twice to Vienna. With an embassy, he moved farther down the Danube into Ottoman-held territory, to Buda, then eight days to Belgrade, another twenty-nine days to beautiful Adrianopolis and Constantinople.
He crossed over to Asia Minor. At the ruins of Troy, he observed that the stones were “not worth the while of going so far to see.” He visited the seraglio at Scutari; he went to Pompey’s Pillar on the Black Sea. When his companions took a brigantine for Alexandretta, he remained behind.
He was planning his own career now. There were fortunes to be made! Europe had an insatiable appetite for the spices, silks, wools, cottons and every other kind of goods from the far away, and still mysterious, East…Persia…India…the farther Indies. Risks? Of course. He was only twenty-six and fearless.
Not until early 1631 did he depart from Constantinople on his first expedition. When, forty-four years later, he dedicated to Louis XIV his account of the many routes he had taken and alternate ways that might be followed, he furnished astute observations on village after village, their inns, foods, flora and fauna, as well as on manners and customs, but he revealed few trading secrets. Either he did not remember or out of ingrained wariness, he would not give away what had cost him so much to learn. He would not even deliver the precise routes he had pursued on several of his six voyages.
What he did disclose gives us valuable insights into the modus operandi of merchant traveling. No man dared go overland alone. “Turkey is full of thieves that keep together and waylay the merchant upon the roads.” A traveler paid for a place in a caravan, that amazing freight train of these centuries. A caravan might string out over 800 or 1000 camels, with as many horses, each beast of burden laden with merchandise or provender or water, and convoying dozens of merchants with their motley attendants. Always there was a caravan-master whom everyone obeyed. Caravans traveled more by night than by day in deep Asia all night long.
From the beginning his own band of ten or twelve, with cooks and body servants, was sure to include a watchmaker. The Persians greatly favored watches but, like later generations, handled them carelessly. Tempers might be soothed, and confidence gained, through a watchmaker’s simple repairs. Probably he also carried a stock of watches, firearms and spectacles for gifts or barter. To the Shah of Persia he once presented a huge steel mirror with a surface so concave it distorted features comically.
On one voyage he hired an artist who could draw likenesses; the man also carried pictures “of certain courtesans.” Which Tavernier ultimately sold for twelve ducats. Once he took along a goldsmith. Usually he had a physician to lance boils and pull teeth and supply sundry healing remedies. His intentions were strictly mercantile; such services might lead to smoother negotiations. On one occasion he won the gratitude of a young Arabian prince by having his surgeon clean the other’s badly stained teeth.
He described seven different routes from Constantinople into Persia, and many others to Agra and Surat in India. His favorite course later was out of Aleppo, but his first journey may have been directly across Turkey. In Smyrna once he bought a great toe broken off a colossal statue and sent it back to a scholar friend in Paris. A marvelous city, Smyrna, with its raw silk, goat’s hair, skins, soaps, cottons, opium. Here women were so respected by the Turks they could avoid payment of duty by concealing goods under their skirts…At Ephesus there was no city, only ruins; the famous Temple of Diane was at the bottom of the hill…
At Gebifa, ancient Lybissa, he saw the tomb of Hannibal: “two good inns and two fair fountains there.” At Isnich, ancient Nicaea, “the soil rich and good for rare fruits.” At Chabangi he bought a pike two feet long for two sous. At Carquelar he noted “a fish with a long nose, speckled like a trout but tastes better” At Delekiras they were waylaid and had to send for a convoy of forty horsemen from the nearest Pasha. Amasia was a great city, but the two inns were “both very bad.”
In Tocat a man could live cheaply: wine excellent, even rare fruit plentiful. It was the only place where saffron grew, “which is the best commodity you can carry to the Indies where a pound will bring 13-14 francs.” When the caravan rested on top of a hill at Charlequen, he saw three of their party killed by six horsemen. At Erzerun, the busiest crossroads in all Turkey, on the frontier of Persia, they had to open their parcels for search and payment of customs. Here they watched a fight staged between buffalos who killed each other with their horns.
Outside Tauris, near Lake Roumi, he tried to buy what may have been a fossilized lizard, but the local governor refused his offer of 1000 crowns. He did buy a camel-load of “congealed stones.” Perhaps geodes, which he sent back to Marseiles as curiosities.
This first trip consumed two years, but we cannot fix his precise course in Persia. We know that he brought back some of Nishapour near Meshed. The journey homeward from Ispahan to Aleppo took fifty-eight days. From Alexandretta he sailed to Malta, thence to Italy and France.
The expedition must have been profitable enough to encourage a second voyage five years later. Whether in the meantime he obtained investment capital from others or borrowed money from his family we do not know. When, on September 13, 1638, he left Paris for Marseilles and Alexandretta he was evidently prepared for a long trip. In addition to his usual company, he had with him his brother Daniel and a young artist. He spent six weeks in Turkey. He did not leave Aleppo, with its paved streets and fifty public baths, till December 27.
He was more comfortable on his second incursion into Persia, but again it is difficult to follow him chronologically…Ardebil is famous as a great market of silks…Most pistachios come from Malavert…The bridge over the River Miana reminded him of Pont Neuf in Paris…At Savi there is a trade in curly-furred lambskins…Koni has excellent pomegranates…
He crossed from Meshed, city of Omar Khayyam with its sacred enclosures, in the northeast, to Shiraz, garden city of Hafiz the poet, in the south, his caravan apparently striking between the two great Persian deserts. He was not in Ispahan and its lovely temperate climate until the beginning of May, 1639 In this glorious city 4600 feet above sea level, with its splendid mosques and minarets, great bridges and mausoleums, he was to become, as he returned again and again, a very welcome visitor. Soon he was calling on Shah Safvi, which implies that he had costly gifts to leave at the court and interesting goods to sell. At this time, he may have seen the fabulous Persian throne with its turquoise and rubies and six immense diamonds.
No sooner had he left this beautiful oasis site than we lose track of him again. He appears to have wound eastward across the flat deserts and the towering mountains. In early 1641 he was deep into Hindustan in the states of the Mogul Empire. The winter of 1640-41, he was at Agra, where is was “very hot,” and Shah Jehan was building the beautiful Taj Mahal, memorial to his beloved Queen Mumtaz.
Next Tavernier was at the walled city of Burhanpur, capital of Deccan- “ wonderful transparent muslins here” – on the way to Surat, chief seaport for Shah Jehan. By end of 1641 he was farther south, at Goa, the terminus for spice trade to Europe.
He made six journeys from Paris to Ispahan and twice that many from Ispahan to Agra, so he may be forgiven if often he meanders in his report. His narrative is everywhere laced with terse, sometimes delightful, comments on the different peoples, the weights and measures, the best exchange of monies, even on the wild animals and the seasonal winds and rains…
Muscat, Ormuz and Bassora-all on the Persian Gulf-are the three places in the East where the heat is most unbearable…In India, caravans are long trains of wagons drawn by oxen…Travel best by the palanquin carried by three men…Keep twenty to thirty men armed with bows and arrows and muskets to guard your company against robbers…Do not intrude into the territories of other rules without permission. Also carry a flag “for greater show”…From Agra to Surat allow 35-40 days; from Surat to Golconda, about the same…
Navapoura is a village of weavers, “also of a wonderful rice with a smell like musk; the nobles of India will eat no other rice. For a present to someone in Persia, take him a sack of this rice.”… “Sironj has muslin so fine you can see the skin of the person as if it were uncovered.”…
Before the monsoons struck Goa he moved due east toward the Kingdom of Golconda. On this occasion Tavernier may have visited the famous diamond mines. In Golconda, 20,000 “public women,” famous for their supple bodies, were available. It was at this time that he acquired the great violet-blue diamond of 122 carats, which probably for its rarity, he kept for twenty-seven years. He sold it to Louis XIV only after his return home from his last voyage to India.
Next Tavernier was at Ahmadabad…Great number of monkeys here, with two or three houses given over as hospitals for cows, oxen, monkeys and other sick or disabled animals…He saw lions being trained at Sidhpur and parties of dervishes; and, in Broach, marvelous conjurers who made a tree grow by magic, bud, branch and flower!
Waiting for a sailing vessel to take him out of Cambay, he visited the pagoda. Where courtesans came to make offerings with their young girl-slave apprentices stood an enormous nude figure like an Apollo “ with the private parts all uncovered.” At the beginning of 1643 he was in Bander Abbas at the Persian Gulf.
So after five years abroad he returned to Paris. This time he did not stay home long at all. In December, 1643 he was off on a third voyage. Once more to Turkey disembarking at Alexandretta. On March 6, he left Aleppo in the company of two Capuchin monks…The Euphrates River appears red; the Tigris, which is as swift as the Loire, is whitish…On the way to Babylon there was Nineveh: nothing but ruins…Two epidemics of locusts darkened the sky: “There are little shops that sell them fried in butter.”
On May 3 he was in Ispahan and, soon, across the cruel mountain ranges again on the way to India. In Kabul, that great meeting-place for merchants, Uzbeks came in to sell horses…The mountain people clean and scrape their tongues every morning with carved pieces of root…Of Lahore he remarked that the men naturally have little hair on their faces; the women, except for their heads, are unprovided with hair on any parts of their bodies…He saw fifteen or twenty elephants breaking off huge branches in a grove of trees…
In January, 1645 he was once more on the way to Golconda. If he had not visited the diamond mines before he inspected them thoroughly now. Estimating that 60,000 men and women were employed in India’s diamond workings, he gives minute descriptions of the operations, including the cutting of the rough stones, the wages of the workers, the local methods of doing business, and his personal experience buying and selling. A 48.5 carat diamond “ of fine water,” which he bought on sight, he sold immediately to a Dutch Captain in Surat for a handsome profit.
He also visited the mines at Raolconda in the territory of the Kingdom of Visapour. The local Governor, impressed with his honesty, instructed the diamond merchants to show him their best. Tavernier records that he spent 20,000 pagodas in gold in a single hour. Alert for diamonds, and for pearls when he could get them, he was prepared to buy heavily.
Later he appeared at the mines at Kollur in the gorge cut by the Krishna River. “The diamonds from Kollur have a green crust, but when cut they are white inside and of very beautiful water.” “Koh-I-nur” for the great legendary diamond seems to have derived from this place named Kollur.
Still later, he was farther north at the mines at Soumelpour in western Bengal. He may have returned to Ispahan via Agra and Lahore in 1647, then turned about to go back to India. He could not always plan ahead; when he heard of unusual opportunities, he sent his aides or simply struck off with his entire company to investigate, and doubled back later.
Wherever Tavernier went now he must have been an impressive figure as he moved grandly with his entourage. He was keeping six or seven persons for his private servants and altogether had about sixty in his company, which suddenly gives us a livelier picture of this determined merchant.
On January 11, 1648, he arrived at Vengurla, above Goa, on the Dutch vessel " Maestricht." In Goa he was received warmly by the Viceroy, the Archbishop and even the Inquisitor General. On April 14 he embarked for Batavia in far-off Java. Only after narrowly escaping shipwreck off the coast of Malabar did he reach the harbor of Point de Galle in Ceylon. He had to continue his voyage in another vessel, which took from June 25 to July 22 to bring him to his destination.
Batavia was the capital for all Holland's enterprise in the Indies. The Dutch, on the heels of the Portuguese, were everywhere in these seas, from Cape Town to Formosa. The rivalries were intense, often unreasoningly bitter.
Here in Batavia, Tavernier nearly ran afoul of the Council, which sternly interrogated him on his purchase of diamonds from the Commander at distant Bander Abbas. Tavernier, evidently forewarned, had information that several to the Councilors had engaged in illicit diamond traffic. The charges were dropped. However, when he bought, they became disagreeable. He would have to collect his money from the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam.
From Batavia he went to visit the kingdom of Bantam and was reunited with his brother Daniel, whom he had left, or sent, there ten years earlier. The King of Bantam, who had become Daniel's close friend, bought several precious stones and displayed his own treasures, including a remarkable kris set with many diamonds. Of these, a 36-carat diamond may now be in the royal regalia of Holland.
One day. While on the way to the palace, Tavernier's party was attacked by a fakir with a poisoned halberd. In the struggle, Tavernier and a Dutch surgeon wrested the weapon from the assassin. His brother Daniel. Who was armed, slew the fakir with three sword-cuts.
On a second return to Batavia great personal grief overwhelmed Tavernier. His beloved Daniel had been stricken and, in spite of every effort to heal him, soon died.
It was probably not before October 1648 that Tavernier took passage for home. He sailed in the Dutch ship "Provinces" which, in a fleet, moved slowly out of Batavia, past the island volcano Krakatoa and through the Sunda Straits. The Captain's reckoning must have been out considerably, for he failed to make the Cocos Island's 600 miles southwest and they were obliged to beat directly across the vast Indian Ocean. They did not come to anchorage at the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of the African Continent for fifty-five days. Although that protracted journey in open sea must have been grueling, Tavernier's account stoically records little that took place aboard ship.
There was still no settlement at the Cape, but the weary crew and exhausted passengers lay over in the great bay, in the shadow of the towering mountains, for three weeks to refit and attend to the sick. About four hundred miles northeast was the blue clay ground of the Kimberley which, two centuries later, would burst alive with great diamonds, but all that was beyond the fantasy of any man.
Sailing northward into the Atlantic, the little fleet was battered for eighteen days more before they sighted St. Helena, 1200 miles west of the African coast. After another lay-over, they set out on the long voyage home to Holland.
From Batavia to Amsterdam had taken nearly half a year. Tavernier was not able to reach Paris until the spring of 1649. He was now in his forty-fifth year.
For two years he traveled about Europe. Although he badgered the Dutch to redeem his pay-bills, the Directors of the East India Company offered him instead return passage to Batavia to collect his money there. After thirty years of wandering he had no roots in his native land. Only when he was abroad was he truly at home. He laid plans for still a fourth voyage.
He left Paris in June, 1651, sailed from Marseilles in the "St. Crispine" in late August,touched at Malta and Cyprus and came to Alexandretta on October 4th. Syria was in an unsettled condition; he could not continue into Persia untill the end of year.
Perhaps he sought Arabian pearls at Bandar Abbas, for he did not board ship again until mid-May. A vessel in the service of the King of Golconda took him on the incredibly long journey down through the Arabian Sea and beyond the coast of Malabar, around the southern tip of India-more storms, and again the threat of shipwreck-and up the eastern shore of the Gulf of Bengal to Masulipatam on the Coromandel Coast.
In the third week of July he began a march to Gandikot, which, with its fortified acropolis, had just been captured for the King of Golconda by Emir Jumla, who had a passion for costly jewels. In a few years the Emir would betray his king into Shah Jehan's hands, and the best of the jewels he was now acquiring would be part of his tribute to his new master. Tavernier, who had observed much intrigue on his travels was not loath to show his pearls and precious stones.
In Golconda a rare human insight was revealed in the Tavernier saga. In October, as the preliminary negotiations with the King's men opened serenely, a eunuch of the court remarked that Tavernier's prices were too high. We can see the merchant's eyes glare, his lips tighten. Abruptly, he halted the discussions, picked up his gems and left the court. The King, though he possessed an immense treasury of jewels, including a crown with a rose of great diamonds, had an insatiable desire for precious stones. Tavernier, however, would brook no reflection on his integrity.
In November he was in Surat on the West Coast again. He went up to Ahmadabad to Shaista Khan, Governor of Gujarat, and sold him several jewels for 120,000 rupees. He also accepted a commission from Shaista Khan to buy him jewels and curiositied in Europe, an undertaking that promised to be highly profitable. After a month of travel by the Aurangabad route, he reappeared in Golconda the following spring and visited the diamond mines once more. He was really to buy, of course, and perhaps to make another effort to show his jewels to the king.
The Dutch and English had declared war. Nevertheless, supremely confident, he dared to sail homeward from Surat in a fleet of Dutch men-0'-war. Before long, of course, they were in the midst of a hot engagement with English warships. Fortunately, the Dutch triumphed and he was able to proceed to Bandar Abbas. His days never lacked for drama, yet he recorded one exciting event after another as laconically as if they were all in the day's work on sea as on land.
From Bandar Abbas he journeyed morth. In Kerman he bought a quantity of unusual wool, noting that here the fleeces were not shorn but in May fell off the sheep, leaving them as naked as pigs. A remarkable wool, this Kerman, never dyed left in its natural clear brown or ash color.
He gave the local Khan a diamond for his dager, which gift smoothed the way for the sale of jewels for 800 livres, with which sum he bought the fine wool-a glimpse into his style of dealing with princes. The Khan also gave him a fine mule, a much esteemed gift in Persia. A nobleman to whom Tavernier gave a carbine, a pair of pistols and a watch pesented him with a staely horse.
He spent months in familiar Ispahan…The wool serge of Yeza is finer than silk; the women here are the handsomest in all Persia…He did not return to Paris until late in 1655. He had passed his fiftieth year while in foreign lands.
Two years later, in February 1657, he was on his way again. Out of Marseilles his ship was pursued by pirates and had to take refuge at the nearest port. That episode so close to home must have jolted him, for he quickly revised his itinerary. He took his jewels on his person and went overland. His heavier goods, the beautiful objects and curiosities he had bought for Shaista Khan in Europe, he sent on by sea.
He was not long apprehensive. Soon he boarded an English ship for Italy, where the dukes, princes and cardinals often were interested in gems. In Tuscany Ferdinand II showed him the great yellow-to-citron Florentine diamond in his possession. That gem, 137.27 carats, was cut as a nine-rayed briolette, 1 ½" long by 1" wide, and thus of unusual appearance. It is now believed to be in Vienna.
Before he sailed for Smyrna, Tavernier sent an aide to buy a quantity of fine pearls said to be available in Constantinople. Pearls, he remarked, were the best articles he could take with him to India. Even the Indian rulers on whose lands the great diamond mines were located coveted remarkable pearls, especially lustrous pure white pearls of perfect form.
At Smyrna he did not join a caravan to take him to Ispahan until June. Even then, he dared not go on to Surat. For India in 1658 was being shaken by a serious political upheaval. Aurangzeb, the restless, impatient third son of Shah Jehan, had imprisoned his ailing father, outwitted his brothers, or defeated them in the field, and usurped the throne of the Moguls. When Tavernier finally ventured into India again, Shaista Khan was laying siege to Choupar in the Deccan. He concluded various transactions with him and, in early 1662, returned to Persia. It is likely that he made another trip to Golconda for diamonds, but the record is not clear.
Now when he returned to Paris, at the age of fifty-five, he married at last. His wife Madeline was the daughter of Jean Goisse, a jeweler related by marriage to Tavernier's brother Melchior. Perhaps the match had long been planned; perhaps Goisse had supplied him with some capital. If Tavernier had promised his bride to give up his traveling, he still had affairs to settle in India. One can almost hear him assuring her that he would be away only a little while, he would be back soon. When he left Paris, on November 27, 1663, he was to be gone another five years.
With him he had his nephew Pierre, probably his younger brother Melchior, and a large stock of precious stones Melchior work and other curiosities, to a value of £30,000, about $500,000 in our currency.
New adventrues follwed. Once he was nearly drowned. In Smyrna - an earthquake tumbled him out of bed; the sea was covered with pumice and a whole island was swallowed. His caravan which took four months to reach Tabriz, passed Naksivan, said to be the oldest city in the world, three leagues from Mount Ararat where the Ark of Noah had rested.
In Ispahan he was received in state by Shah Abbas II, who had bought jewels from him six years earlier. Shah Abbas not merely purchased a new lot of jewels, to a value of £13,455, but on December 20, 1664 bestowed upon him the robe of honor with girdle, bonnet, and tunic and the mantle of sable martin in which he sat, or stood, for his portrait. The Shah also gave him the calaat, a certificate vouching for his character and, at the end of seventeen hours of feasting, hospitably offered him the pleasure of any woman in his harem. Tavernier declined the honor.
Again he began a journey to India. To Aurangzeb, now the Great Mogul since he had deposed his father, Tavernier presented truly regal gifts; a richly gilt, highly embossed buckler that had been made years ago to order of Cardinal Richelieu; a battle-ax of rock crystal ornamented with rubies and emeralds set in gold; and saddles embroidered with rubies. Pearls and diamonds. These several gifts had cost him 12,119 livres. He also gave gifts to the Shah's uncle, to his treasurer, to the porters of the Shah's treasury and the eunuch of the Begum, the Shah's sister. The grand total of all the gifts on this occasion came to 23,187 livres. Gifts, Tavernier observed drily, were necessary to pave the way for anyone who wished to do business at the courts of the great princes, in Turkey and in Persia as in India.
Now Tavernier sold the Great Mogul a number of his most precious stones. To Zafar Khan, the Mogul's uncle, he sold a few more. An enormous pear-shaped pearl of 220 grains
(55 carats) - from Margarita - that the latter coveted, Tavernier would not yield because the Khan would not meet his price.
In Jehanabad, Aurangzeb persuaded him to linger on for the annual festival. The traveler's reward for staying on was to be the climax to his long career: the viewing, on November 10, 1665, of all the fabulous jewels in Aurangzeb's treasury. Included in the showing were the famous "Grand Mogul" diamond, so named by Tavernier. Found around 1650 at Kollur, it had been a gift to Shah Jehan from Emir Jumla who used it to ingratiate himself while he betrayed the King of Golconda. Also shown to Tavernier were the long, flat Shah Diamond with its engraved inscriptions; the "Great Table" diamond and three smaller "table" diamonds; huge pearls, pear-shaped and also round, and rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and many more diamonds. As a special favor Tavernier was allowed to hold each jewel in his own hands and to examine it with closer attention at his leisure.
After that unusual event he left for Agra and the Bengal area. At Allahabad he got permission to cross the Ganges and arrived at Benares, but not untill mid-January 1666 did he finally see Shaista Khan at Dacca. To him, he did sell the enormous pearl. Though Shaista Khan accepted it, he too, considered the price very high and Tavernier had great difficulty collecting his money.
On July 2, while at Patna, he saw an eclipse of the sun. At Agra in August, he talked to various French emissaries who, at last, were eager to form French East India Company. It was on this voyage that his younger brother Melchior died. Again he went to Surat, then to Bandar Abbas where, among others he met the traveler John Chardin.
Tavernier had a wife waiting in Paris. Once more, perhaps mindful that he would not be here again, he stayed on in Ispahan for several months. He prolonged his stay in Constantinople, too, and did not return home until December 6, 1668.
He was sixty-three. Time for a man to retire? He sold twenty-five diamonds to Louis XIV, one the great violet-blue of 112 carats, which he had bought in 1642-and from which the Blue Hope Diamond, 44½ carats, is believed later to have been cleaved-three huge rubies. As far as is known, not until the famous Diamond Necklace was offered to Marie Antoinette more than a century later were so many jewels available to a European monarch in a single "parcel," and at no time so remarkable a blue diamond.
Tavernier so impressed the Sun King that, in February 1669, he was granted letters of nobility. Next April, with part of the more than £100,000 that Louis XIV paid him, he bought the barony of Aubonne near Geneva and was received in Berne as "Seigneur Baron d'Aubonne." He was sixty-five and had been traveling nearly fifty years.
At the command of the King, he began to write a full account of his travels. If the French were to establish a company as profitable as the Portuguese, Dutch and English ventures, they must have the benefit of his experiences. Tavernier's amanuenes had no easy time, for his records were meager. Even if Baron d'Aubonne had diligently kept journals and papers, it must have taken weeks and months to jog his aging memory. Suddenly, perhaps prodded by the court, he was impatient to see his account in print.
In 1675 his first book, "Nouvelle Relation de l'Interieur du Serail du Grand Seigneur," appeared. The following year, his two-volume opus on " Les Six Voyages" was pulished, dedicated, of course, to Louis XIV. The work aroused so great an interest that sevral editions were issured, with translations soon into English, German, Dutch and Italian. There had been splendid travel books before, certainly better written, for Tavernier was neither fabulist nor poet and wrote with little humor. But no other traveler's account of his day covered so vast an area and so many extended journeys.
From the publication, in 1679, of his last book, "Recueil de Plusieur Relations," untill 1684, Tavernier was active commercially, yet for him relatively inactive. Abroad he had been a great figure on the move in the center of a retinue; here he was another old man, with no children and few relations and hardly anyone with whom to talk of his amazing adventures.
He was not destined to spend his last days in robe and slippers by his own hearth. If Louis XIV had no further need for him, other nations saw him as the ideal emissary for trade negotiations with the Great Mogul. So, when at the age of seventy-nine, he was called to Berlin by the Elector's nomination as his Ambassdor to India.
Perhaps to consolidate his capital reserves for one more great venture, Tavernier, in January 1685, upon his return to Paris after an extended trip across Germany and Holland, sold his estate at Aubonne to the Marquis Henri du Quesne and prepared to leave. However, fresh entanglements caused perturbing delays. (The anti-Protestant prejudice in France may even have sent him to the Bastille, but that has not been proven. No sooner was his estate sold than the undertaking for the embassy to India evaporated; why is not clear, but it was finished. Suddenly, also, like a clap of thunder, Tavernier learned that he had suffered great reverses with, in particular, substantial losses on a cargo he had entrusted to his nephew Pierre in Persia.
To recoup these losses if he could, he must set out once more for the East. In July 1687 he obtained a passport to Switzerland. Was he on the way to Italy and then to Turkey? Next we hear of him in Copenhagen and was bound for Russia.
In early February 1689, he apparently was well received by the Muscovites. Here the story falters and comes to a disheartening close. No more news: silence. There was a rumor that the aged merchant had died near Smolensk before he reached Moscow. What ailment had felled him is not known. Indeed, not until 1876 was a tomb discovered in an old Protestant cemetery near Moscow with the name "Tavernier," partly illegible, above it.
Why, after so many journeys via Turkey and Persia, had he gone by this northern route? Was it his plan to sell gems to the court of the Romanoffs, where Peter, later called "the Great," had just come to the throne, or to solicit commissions in Persia and India in his behalf? Silence! Did he, at the last, travel alone? What of the funds he must have had on his person and the precious stones he usually carried? Did the government in Paris make inquiries after his disappearance? Did his brother? Did his wife? No Frenchman with so distinguished a name, given his barony by Louis XIV, would be permitted to vanish without a trace. The record is blank; there is no record. Sic transit!
So the travels of the remarkable Tavernier, 60,000 leagues and more by land and sea, had come to an end in the eighty-fifth year of his long, long journey. His story, "Les Six Voyages," however imperfect, remains his only legacy. For wherever men write of great jewels, it is his name, and usually his alone, that is mentioned again and again: "Tavernier saw… Tavernier was there…
Tavernier's own account of the jewels of the Great Mogul
November 10, 1665
Immediately on my arrival at the Court the two custodians of the King's jewels accompanied me into the presence of his Majesty. After I had made him the ordinary salutation, they conducted me into a small apartment, which is at one of the ends of the hall where the King was seated on his throne, and from whence he was able to see us. I found in this apartment Aki Khan, chief of the jewel treasury, who, when he saw us, ordered four of the King's eunuchs to go for the jewels, which were brought in two large wooden trays lacquered with gold leaf and covered with small cloths, one of red velvet, the other of green brocaded velvet…
The first piece which Aki Khan placed in my hands was the great diamond (the Great Mogul) which is a round rose, very high on one side. At the basal margin it has a small notch and little flaw inside. Its water is beautiful, and it weights three hundred and nineteen and a half
(319 1/2) ratis; and it had several flaws.
If this stone had been in Euroup it would have been treated in a different manner. Some good pieces would have been taken from it, and it would have weighed more than it does, instead of which it has been all ground down. It was the Sieur Hortensio Borgio, a Venetian, who cut it, for which he was badly rewarded; for when it was cut he was reproached with having spoilt the stone, which ought to have retained a greater weight. Instead of paying him for his work, the King fined him ten thousand (10,000) rupees, and would have taken more if he had possessed it. If the Sieur Hortensio had understood his trade well, he would have been able to take a large piece from this stone without doing injury to the King, and without having had so much trouble grinding it; but he was not a very accomplished diamond cutter.
After I had fully examined this splendid stone, and returned it into the hands of Aki Khan, he showed me another stone, pear-shaped, of good form and fine water, and also three other table diamonds, two clear, and the other with little black spots. Each weighed fifty-five (55) to sixty (60) ratis, and the pear sixty-two and a half (62 1/2). Subsequently he showed me a jewel of twelve diamonds, each stone of 15 to 16 ratis, and all roses. In the middle a heart-shaped rose of good water, but with three small flaws; this rose weighed about 35 or 40 ratis.
Also a jewel with seventeen diamonds, half of them table and half rose, the largest of which could not weigh more than seven (7) or eight (8) ratis, with the exception of the one in the middle, which weighed about sixteen (16). All these stones are of first-class water, clean and of good form, and of the most beautiful kind ever found.
Also two grand pear-shaped pearls, one about seventy (70) ratis, a little flattened on both sides, and of beautiful water and good form. Also a peal button, which might weigh from fifty-five (55) to sixty (60) ratis, of good form and good water. Also a round pearl of great perfection, a little flat on one side, which weighs fifty-six (56) ratis. I ascertained that to be the precise weight, and that Shah Abbis II. King of Persia, sent it as a present to the Great Mogul. Also three other round pearls. Each of twenty-five (25) to twenty-eight (28) ratis, or thereabouts, but the water of which tends to yellow. Also a perfectly round pearl of thirty-six and a half (36 1/2 ) ratis, of a lively white, and perfect in every respect…
Aki Khan also placed in my hands ( for he allowed me to examine all at my ease ) two other pearls, perfectly round and equal, each of which weighed twenty-five and quarter (25 1/4) ratis. One is slightly yellow, but the other is of a very lively water, and the most beautiful that can be seen. It is true, as I have elsewhere said, that the Prince of Arabia has a pearl which surpasses in beauty all others in the world; for it is perfectly round, and so white and lively that it looks as though it was transparent, but it only weighs fourteen (14) carats. There is not a single monarch in Asia who has not asked this Prince of Arabia to sell him this pearl.
Also two chains, one of pearls and rubies of different shapes pierced like the pearls; the other of pearls and emeralds, round and bored. All the pearls are round and of diverse waters, and from ten to twelve (10 to 12) ratis each in weight. In the middle of the chain of rubies there is a large emerald of the "old rock" cut into a rectangle, and of high color, but with many flaws. It weighs about thirty (30) ratis, In the middle of the chain of emeralds there is an Oriental amethyst ( a purple sapphire), a long table, weighing about forty (40) ratis, and the perfection of beauty.
Also a balas ruby cut in cabochon, of fine color and clean, pierced at the apex, and weighing seventeen (17) melscals. Six melscals make one once (French). Also another cabochon ruby of perfect color, but slightly flawed and pierced at the apex, which weighs twelve melscals. Also an Oriental topaz ( a yellow sapphire ) of very high color cut in eight panels, which weighs six melscals, but on one side it has a small white fog within.
These, then, are the jewel of the Great Mogul, which he ordered to be shown to me as a special favor which he has never manifested to any other Frank; and I have held them all in my hand, and examined them with sufficient attention and leisure to be able to assure the reader that the description which I have just given is very exact and faithful.
The Great Mogul Diamond is believed by some authorities to be the Orloff Diamond (199 carats) now in the Moscow Diamond Treasury; others are convinced that, either during the sack of New Delhi by Nadir Shah (1739) or after his death, it disappeared, or was stolen and was cut into smaller gems.
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