Infamous Largest Timur Ruby Of Indian Origin !! - In The British Crown (Revised Post 2015)

Navrang India November 22, 2024

Timur Ruby , British Crown, .lotusgemology.com

Timur Ruby, British crown. .lotusgemology.com

 The Timur  ruby (Kiraj-i-Alam) is an un-faceted, 352.5 carat polished red Spinel gemstone set in a necklace of Oriental inspiration in 1853  by  the Royal  jeweler Garrard. The necklace was then lengthened  in 1911. However, the most valuable necklace had never been worn by  any British Royal member though it was part of the British Crown  Jewels.  In 1851 it was regarded as the largest known ruby in the world and only later it was found out it was not ruby, but was only a Spinel gemstone. Jahangir Shah, the Mogul Emperor of India, got  this famous ruby as a gift from Shah Abbas,  his buddy in 1612. 

Rajah Duleep Singh (minor), Punjab, pinrest.com

.Queen Victoria. ruby-pendants.blogspot.com

pinrest.com

Timur ruby, looted from Punjab maharajah. pinrest.com

Above image:. In 1849, the Timur Ruby (together with the famous Koh-i-Nur diamond) was annexed by the British Empire and came into the possession of Queen Victoria...............

Timur Ruby,Indian origin in the British Crown.silvershake.com

Jahangir Shah got his name inscribed on the ruby. The early inscription on it, It is believed, was removed before it was gifted to Jahangir Shah. Later it was in possession of successive  Mogul rulers and Shah Jahan, during his reign 1628 and 1658, had this enormous stone mounted on his  famous peacock throne. After Aurangzeb (1658-1707), his successors kept the ruby  safely,  

During the reign of Muhammad Shah (1719 -1748), Persian king  Nadir Shah, invaded and plundered Delhi and Agra.in February, 1739. Among the numerous treasures included diamonds Nur-ul-Ain, the Darya-i-Noor, Kohinoor diamond and Timur Ruby. 

Locked away in obscurity for about 6 decades, Timur Ruby was identified by the inscriptions in Persian on it.   "This is the Ruby from the twenty-five thousand genuine jewels of the King of Kings the Sultan Sahib Qiran,(also known as Timur) which in the year 1740 A.D. from the collection of jewels of Hindustan, reached this place (Isfahan)."  Timur, a direct descendant of Mongol emperor Genghis Khan,(13th CE) acquired the gemstone during his 1398 raid on Delhi in India, hence its name the Timur Ruby.

After  Nadir Shah's murder  in 1747, the slain king's kingdom was in disarray.  Ahmed Khan Abdali, commander of Nadir's huge army captured Nadir's vast jewelry collections,  including Timur ruby and Kohinoor diamond, etc and settled in Afghanistan. After his death, Timur ruby and Kohinoor diamond fell in the hands of Shah brothers. One of them Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk 1810 after killing his brother escaped to Lahore, Punjab where he was given asylum by Raja Ranjit Singh of Punjab. Later, driven by greed, ruler  Ranjit singh himself became the owner of Kohinoor diamond and also Timur ruby after seizing  them from Shah Shuja.

Timur Ruby of Indian origin  lotusgemology.com

After the death of Ranjit Singh,  succession to the became a serious matter, Finally, Dulip Singh, a minor and  last son of  Ranjit  was installed as king, and his mother Jindan Kaur as the Regent to run the government  for the minor legal heir.  

 Haunted by gree to capture fertile Punjab, English company        used the 'Doctrine of lapse' as an excuse and  finally captured  the land and Raja's personal jeweler collections. The Lahore treaty (9th March,1846) was concluded, the company was represented  by the Governor-General Sir Henry Hardinge and two officers and for the Sikhs, by the seven-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh Bahadur and seven members of the Lahore Durbar acting on his behalf. 

As part of the treaty (under subtle coercion), the Governor-General of India received the Kohinoor,Timur Ruby, etc from Dr. John Login, in charge of the Toshakhana (Royal Treasury), Royal Fort, Lahore, under a proper receipt dated December 7,1849, in the presence of the members of the Board of Administration.

Thus the British Crown under Queen Victoria  became the permanent owner of the most famous (actually infamous) precious stones including large Timur Ruby (Spinel) via the ‘The British East India Company,' a trading company established by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600. This company, during their  misrule in India under the blessings of the British Crown, literally not only swindled India's rich Maharajas and Nawabs but also drove the Indian people to face abject poverty, dejection and  emancipation. 

The Timur Ruby and other precious stones left the shores of India for good from Bombay on the 6th of April, 1850 and formally handed over to  Queen Victoria in a ceremony held on July 3,1850, at Buckingham Palace by Sir J. W. Logg, Deputy Chairman of the East India Company, in the presence of Sir John Hobhouse. The Timur Ruby is now in  the private  collection of  Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Timur Ruby was officially cataloged as a “short necklace of four very large Spinel rubies.”

Yet another infamous gemstone - the Timur Ruby (Spinel), was added to the Queen’s jewelry inventory, the other being the  Koh-I-Noor diamond,.

Encyclopedia Britannica 2006.
Hughes, R.W - The Rubies and Spinels of Afghanistan.A brief history 2004.