The Most Valuable Collection of Jewelry in the World.

Mirror mirror on the wall...who's got the most stuff in their Banquet Hall? As of about 20 years ago...it was the Persians. Today they're called Iranians. But a rose by any other name and all that. Anyway folks...for those to whom these things are of invaluable importance, the crown treasure of the royal house of Persia (Iran) contained--again as of twenty years ago--the most valuable collection of jewelry in the whole world. It might well be still true today. I suspect it is. Now for the meat and potatoes of it all. How did they get it? And, should you want some, how do you go about getting it too? Hmmmm?

Well...it started like this. Around the year 1500 a group called the Safavids founded Iran. They then "procured" the following...I looked up "procured" in the dictionary and the definition was: to bring about...by unscrupulous and indirect means. Anyway, this is what they did. The procured gold from mines in Turkistan. They procured pearls from the Persian Gulf. They got hold of jewelry and art works in India, Constantinople, and Venice. Nothing about procuring this time. But hold on folks. There's more. They took gifts of gold and diamonds from official guests. And they procured precious stones as war booty back to their country.

As these things go...one thing leads to another...and you can't just go around procuring all this stuff without someone getting a little envious and thinking aw heck, maybe I'll do a little procuring on my own. And that's what the Afghans did. Only thing is...when the Afghans did it, it wasn't called procuring, it was called plundering. Now how many of you out there agree with me when I say English is truly the most amazing of languages. 'Scuse me your honor, I wasn't stealing. No sir. I was procuring. No law on the books against that, is there? But to continue....A lot of the stuff that was stolen by the Afghans made its way to the court of the Indian Great Moguls...where they did not stay, because Shah Nadir got them back in the middle 1700's.

Now...one little itty bitty thing about Nadir. I'm talking about his throne. It was made of gold and enamel, and it was set with emeralds and rubies and other precious stones. What? What's that you ask? How many precious stones. Oh...well...now that you ask...how about 26,733 stones. Now there's a setting job for you diamond setters out there who like to tackle big things. Me, personally, I never worked on anything that big. A 250 carat emerald was the largest stone I ever set...with prongs paveed with diamonds. But that's another story.

Now then...some time passes...and a guy named Ahmad of the Abdali tribe, makes himself Shah and steals part of the treasure--can you believe they use the word "steal" here. I was getting to love "procure" so much. Anyway, among other things, he steals the Koh-I-Noor diamond and skedaddles the heck out of there. But it doesn't matter, because subsequent dynasties add to the royal coffers ...and among the things they add is a Jeweled Globe and forty-eight South African diamonds. Five of these diamonds, by the way, weigh more than 100 carats each.

But it's the Jeweled Globe that interests us here folks. It's a major design in jewelry. It's purpose was to present part of the individual stones that were lying dormant in the coffers somewhere in the basement, or attic of the Persian Empire, in a most attractive manner. Hence...the Globe. It's size: 61 cm. in diameter. That's roughly 2 feet wide. The seas of the Globe are demarcated by emeralds. The lands and continents by rubies, red spinels, diamonds, and sapphires. The equator and the longitudes and latitudes are demarcated by rubies. The whole shebang weighs somewhere in the vicinity of 80 lbs. And as for the amount of gems used...try this: 51,366 jewels with a total weight of 18,200 carats. Can you believe this?

Now I don't want to bring up the starving children around the world, and I don't want to wax political here...but I think a lot of folks could eat off of that stuff. And there it is...the whole story...or at least part of the whole story.

Oh yeah...I said I'd go about telling you how to go about getting some of this treasure stuff too. Well...you could always try procuring. It works for some...just as long as you don't steal or anything like that. Or you can always try marrying a single Shah that might be floating around somewhere.

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