Trade with India and Portugal
Diamonds start appearing in European regalia and jewelry in the 13th and 14th centuries. The early diamond trading capital was Venice, where diamond cutting possibly originated sometime after 1330. By the late 14th century, the diamond trade route went to Bruges and Paris, and later on Antwerp. By 1499, the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to the Orient around the Cape of Good Hope, providing Europeans an end-run around the Arabic obstruction to the trade of diamonds coming from India. Goa, on India's Malabar Coast, was set up as the Portuguese trading center, and a diamond way developed from Goa to Lisbon to Antwerp.
Mogul rule of India (1526--1857) was distinct by the flowering of art and architecture. This period, when diamond production increased, is famous for the creation of lavish objects like the Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan (1592--1666), which may have held the Koh-i-Noor diamond as a hanging bauble always in view of the shah's eyes. Many of the big riches of Persia were obtained by Nadir Shah when he sacked Delhi in 1739, taking the jewels and Peacock Throne back to Teheran, where most of the looted objects reside today among the Iranian Crown Jewels. Sadly, the Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan was actually destroyed soon after Nadir Shah's death.
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