I’ve already talked about the Uzbeks returning a looted diamond to Shah Abbas, and the jewels Abbas gifted to Jahangir. Here’s another posting on jewels – this time in the current Iranian collection.
When I visited this several years ago, I was lucky enough to be shown round by the Director himself. Pressing my nose up against the glass cases in an altogether forbidden way, I fell most definitely in love with the yellow diamonds (purchased by Nasser al-Din Shah, so nothing to do with Shah Abbas); and gaped at the craft-skills implied by the thousands – or was that millions – of teeny-tiny pearls somehow drilled and strung into metres and metres – and metres – of deep lustrous fringes.
Vita Sackville-West had even more fun when she visited Tehran in 1926:
“I was not very much excited at the prospect of seeing the treasury of imperial Iran, nor did the lackadaisical air of the frock-coated ministers help to raise my anticipations. They stood round, drinking little cups of tea, smiling in a gentle, secret and self-satisfied way, while servants ran busily, spreading green baize over the table, and bringing from the recesses of an inner room leather cases and linen bags carelessly tied with string. I was watching all this preparation with a rather perfunctory interest, my thoughts elsewhere, when suddenly, and as with a physical start, my eyes and thoughts came together, as gears engaging; I stared, I gasped; the small room vanished; I was Sinbad in the Valley of the Gems, Aladdin in the Cave. The linen bags vomited emeralds and pearls; the green baize vanished, the table became a sea of precious stones. The leather cases opened, displaying jewelled scimitars, daggers encrusted with rubies, buckles carved from a single emerald; ropes of enormous pearls . . The ministers laughed at our amazement and incredulity. There seemed no end to the treasure thus casually produced . . . We plunged our hands up to the wrist in the heaps of uncut emeralds, and let the pearls run through our fingers.”
Sackville-West’s ‘Passenger to Tehran’ has just been re-issued – and here are a few sample pages to get started with.