The Iranian Crown Jewels, more correctly called the Iranian National Jewels, comprise one of the world's most significant accumulations of historic gemstones, ceremonial regalia and royal jewellery. The collection has been built up across multiple Persian dynasties beginning with the Safavids in the sixteenth century and reached its final configuration under the Pahlavi dynasty in the twentieth century. Since 1955 the collection has been displayed publicly in the Treasury of National Jewels in Tehran, and since 1979 it has been held by the state of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Origin and accumulation

The accumulation of major stones in the Persian royal collections accelerated in the eighteenth century under Nader Shah Afshar (reigned 1736-1747), whose 1739 invasion of the Mughal Empire and sack of Delhi brought the Koh-i-Noor and Daria-i-Noor diamonds and the Peacock Throne into Persian hands. The Koh-i-Noor subsequently passed to Afghan rulers and ultimately to the British Crown by way of the East India Company. The Daria-i-Noor, however, remained in Persia and is among the centrepieces of the modern collection. Subsequent Qajar rulers (1789-1925) added further pieces, both by acquisition and by commission from European and Iranian jewellers.

Daria-i-Noor

The Daria-i-Noor (Sea of Light) is the largest pink diamond in the Iranian collection, estimated at approximately 182 carats, and one of the largest pink diamonds in the world. It is a step-cut stone of exceptional clarity and a delicate pink colour. Some scholars have proposed that the Daria-i-Noor was originally part of a larger stone, the Great Table diamond mentioned in Mughal records, which may have been split into the Daria-i-Noor and a second stone, the Nur-ul-Ain, also held in the collection. The hypothesis is supported by analyses of the proportions and positioning of inclusions in the two stones.

Nur-ul-Ain tiara

The Nur-ul-Ain (Light of the Eye) tiara is one of the celebrated centrepieces of the collection. It was created by Harry Winston in 1958 for the wedding of Empress Farah Diba to Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, set with the 60-carat oval pink Nur-ul-Ain diamond, surrounded by white and yellow diamonds in a classical tiara form. The tiara is one of the most photographed individual pieces from the collection and one of the high points of mid-twentieth-century European-American jewellery commissioned for an Iranian royal occasion.

Pahlavi Crown

The Pahlavi Crown was made for the 1926 coronation of Reza Shah Pahlavi by Iranian jewellers in Tehran, drawing on stones from the Qajar collection and on the Sasanian-inspired iconography of pre-Islamic Persia. The crown is set with thousands of stones including a central yellow diamond of approximately 60 carats, multiple pink and yellow diamonds, large emeralds and pearls. Its design deliberately echoed earlier Persian royal traditions and was intended to legitimise the Pahlavi dynasty by visual reference to that heritage. A second Pahlavi Crown was made for Empress Farah's coronation in 1967 by the French jeweller Van Cleef & Arpels.

Globe of Jewels

The Globe of Jewels, known in Persian as the Globe of Jahanguir, is a sphere approximately 66 cm in diameter mounted on a stand, covered in approximately 51,000 individual stones representing the seas in emerald and the continents in ruby (with Iran picked out in diamonds). It was constructed in the late nineteenth century under Naser al-Din Shah Qajar and remains one of the most striking single objects in any royal collection. The piece is more remarkable for its scale and concept than for the individual quality of its stones, but the cumulative effect is unmatched.

Peacock Throne

The throne now displayed in the collection as the Peacock Throne is not the original Mughal Peacock Throne taken from Delhi by Nader Shah; the original was apparently broken up after Nader Shah's death and its stones dispersed. The current throne is a later Qajar-era construction (sometimes dated to the early nineteenth century under Fath-Ali Shah) covered in stones from the wider royal collection. It carries the Peacock Throne name through historical association rather than direct identity with the Mughal original.

Other significant pieces

The collection contains many further pieces, including additional crowns and tiaras, ceremonial swords and shields encrusted with stones, sets of jewellery for state occasions, and a substantial loose-stone holding that includes major emeralds, rubies, sapphires, spinels and pearls. The total inventory is in the tens of thousands of pieces.

Display and access

The Treasury of National Jewels is located in the basement of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Tehran and is open to public viewing on a scheduled basis. The collection is held by the state and used as backing for the national currency. International access to the pieces for academic study is limited but not impossible, and several substantial published catalogues, notably the work of V. B. Meen and A. D. Tushingham in the 1960s and 1970s, document the major pieces in detail.

Position in world heritage

The Iranian Crown Jewels stand alongside the British Crown Jewels, the Russian State Diamond Fund, the Saudi royal collections, the Wittelsbach-era Bavarian collection, the Habsburg jewels and other major royal accumulations as one of the great surviving deposits of historic gemstones. Of these, the Iranian collection is unusual in having remained intact through the regime change of 1979 because the state-ownership constitutional arrangement was already in place under the Pahlavis. The result is that the collection survives essentially intact today, accessible (with constraints) to scholars and to the visiting public, in a configuration close to that established in the mid-twentieth century.