Emeralds | Kris Lane | New World Objects of Knowledge

EMERALDS

Kris Lane

Figure 1. Mughal emerald amulet (courtesy of the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait).

What do you give the empress or prince who has everything? At one time, just a few centuries ago, emeralds were a good choice, particularly if that prince or empress ruled over an Islamic kingdom or empire. Green, after all, is the colour of the Prophet and of Paradise, and intimate connections to both could be advertised in the form of turban ornaments, rosaries, rings and amulets (Figure 1). No other precious stone so closely resembles plant life, the chlorophyll promise of eternal renewal.

In early modern times, a fine emerald could be a kind of portable hierophany, as much for Hindus and Christians as for Muslims. Spanish jewellers in the 16th century lovingly described emerald inclusions or peculiar internal flaws as jardín, or ‘garden’, while also referring to the best stones as having ‘the colour of heaven’ (laya del cielo). A fine emerald, one might say, was a fossilised remnant of Eden, a foretaste of the Promised Land. Emerald was also medicine and prophylaxis, protection against poisonous food, snakebite, an enemy’s arrows and the evil eye.

Ancient Western and Eastern traditions alike trace emeralds to Old World sources, most notably Egypt. Some were found in parts of South Asia and there was one source in Austria, but such stones tended to be small, inconsistently coloured or cloudy. Emeralds would later be found in Russia, Central Africa and Brazil, but in early modern times the only new source of these peculiar green rocks – hexagonal crystals of aluminium beryllium silicate spiked with chromium – was New Granada, today’s Colombia. They caused a global stir once they hit the market after 1540, and despite new finds, Colombia still produces the most prized emeralds in the world, the product of a geological fluke.

Figure 2. The Llanos from the emerald mines of Somondoco (today Chivor), Colombia (photo by K. Lane).

Colombia’s emerald belt trends northwest to southeast about 100 km north of Bogotá, with the most famous mines located near the towns of Muzo and Chivor (Figure 2). In the rugged hills spilling off either side of the Eastern Cordillera, emeralds ranging in colour from brilliant aqua to deep green are found in tiny, almost random pockets amid enormously thick beds of coal-black shale and buff to grey limestone. In colonial as in pre-Columbian times, armies of workers mined emeralds by chipping benches into hillsides and flushing away detritus with water collected above. Mining emeralds was hard and frustrating work, made worse by tropical ailments. It also sped deforestation, erosion and river sedimentation.

Figure 3. Muisca votive objects in cast gold with inset emeralds (courtesy of the Museo de Oro, Bogotá; photo by K. Lane).

Emeralds appear in pre-Columbian gravesites, primarily in Muisca territory around Bogotá’s high plain (Figure 3), but they have been discovered in Colombia’s hotter southwest, too, in Calima-culture tombs and among the coast-dwelling La Tolita–Tumaco chiefdoms. These emeralds apparently gave rise to the legendary River of Emeralds in Ecuador, where no such stones seem to originate. Emeralds appear not to have gone much further south in the Andes beyond Ecuador before the 16th century, although other green stones esteemed by the Incas and the Chimú tricked the conquistadors. Emeralds from Colombia’s unique geological belt also made their way north occasionally, but few got beyond Panama. Relatively small, brittle and not easily carved, most emeralds could not displace the famous jades or jadeites of Guatemala beloved by the Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples.

So, it was only after the 1530s conquest expeditions of Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and other invaders of ‘the New Kingdom of Granada’ that the outside world learned of the finest, largest and greenest emerald crystals ever seen. Conquistadors sent sample stones from the pre-Columbian mines of Somondoco (today Chivor) to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and successors sent prime stones from Muzo (discovered in the 1560s) to his son and heir, King Philip II. Royal severance taxes were immediately collected in Santa Fe de Bogotá along with quintos of gold, after which traders and lapidaries moved their shiny product to market, near and far. Some emeralds were smuggled out of the continent and others were absorbed into locally fashioned votive objects such as the astonishing Crown of the Andes (Figure 4).

Taxed or deemed contraband, New Granada’s emeralds were always stowed among better known commodities such as gold or pearls, sometimes sewn into a priest’s robe or a merchant’s frock coat for security. In Cartagena, emeralds pooled among New Christian and other global traders, who sent them on to wholesale gem markets in Seville, Lisbon and eventually Amsterdam and London. We know about them thanks to a mix of Inquisition and notary records. Some raw emeralds found their way into European curiosity cabinets (Figures 5 and 6), and a few were fashioned into odd jewels such as the emerald watch found in London’s famous Cheapside Hoard (Figure 7).

Gemstones are not like other commodities, and gem traders inadvertently saturated European markets by the end of the 16th century, driving prices downward. This forced emerald handlers to search for new and wealthy customers. By coincidence, it was precisely at this time that Europeans were expanding trade with the Near and Far East, including territories claimed by the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Empires. All three were engaged in rapid territorial expansion projects fuelled by gunpowder.

Figure 4. The Crown of the Andes, Popayán, Colombia, 17th–18th centuries (courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

The Portuguese were first to take Colombian emeralds overseas, and it was probably they who introduced some of the world’s largest and finest stones to India and Persia via Goa and Hormuz. Emeralds also bounced through the several gem bourses of the Mediterranean (Barcelona, Genoa, Livorno, Venice) to Cairo and Istanbul. Middlemen included New Christian merchant clans of Spanish, Portuguese or Italian birth, but gem traders included Armenians, French Huguenots and before long the North European trading companies, especially the English and Dutch East India Companies. Most emeralds were picked up for transhipment at Lisbon, Seville or Cadiz, but some went directly from the Americas to Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, to be refashioned or shipped onward raw to Asia.

Eastern markets were not easily penetrated, but emeralds had the benefit of appealing to Muslim rulers and high-ranking subjects in the Near East and South Asia. First, there were three rising empires, the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals, who were all gaining tremendous wealth from conquest and tribute. Second, each of these empires was headed by a sultan, shah or emperor who revelled in the accumulation of material things as well as in commissioning devotional objects, some of them sent to Mecca (most were later returned in the wake of anti-idolatry sentiments).

Figure 5. Habsburg emerald cluster, 16th century (courtesy of the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna).

Figure 6. ‘Moor’ with c.1581 emerald cluster, 1724; https://skd-online-collection.skd.museum/Details/Index/117440 (courtesy of the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden).

Figure 7. Emerald Watch from the Cheapside Hoard (courtesy of the Museum of London).

In the 17th and early 18th centuries particularly, eye-popping emeralds were a perfect fit for an expanding world of court opulence, especially one fuelled by competition not only among the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals but also among their many lesser tributary kingdoms and resistant neighbours. Gifting created a peculiar sort of market dynamic, as did the great creativity of Persian and South Asian lapidaries. For example, Portuguese or Banyan gem traders in Goa might sell a cache of raw emeralds to an outlying shah who was negotiating with the Mughals, not yet fully subjected but discovering that it might be time to strike a deal. The Mughal emperor – say, Shah Jahan – would then receive a finely carved emerald from a visiting shah or rajah, be careful to praise it and then outdo it with a return gift of cash, jewelled objects and exotic animals (Figure 8). Politics was performed by means of these highly choreographed acts of reciprocity.

Though not all emeralds moved at this high imperial level, large and exceptional stones usually did. Other gifts included emerald rosaries, turban ornaments and studded boxes. The Mughals and Ottomans in particular were fond of both votive objects and emerald-handled daggers. There were emerald ornaments for women in both royal families (Figure 9), but typically emerald was associated with masculine leadership, sometimes rendered in the form of protective amulets inscribed with verses from the Qur’an or with Shi’a prayers, since most artisans were Persians. Such amulets could be sewn into a ceremonial silk jacket, prayer side facing in, carved palm frond or lotus flower side out (Figure 10). Other religious items traded by the Mughals included a remarkable emerald cup, fashioned from a large crystal and inscribed with Persian verses (Figure 11).

Figure 8. Shah Jahan and his emeralds (courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London).

The Topkapı Dagger (Figure 12), named for the famous palace and museum in which it sits, represents another kind of diplomacy. Fashioned in the early 18th century by Ottoman craftsmen, the emerald-studded weapon was meant as a peace offering to the Persian successor of the Safavids, Nadir Shah (Figure 13). A military force of nature whose ambitions prefigured Napoleon’s, Nadir Shah had defeated the Mughal ruler and sacked Delhi in 1739, making off with the lion’s share of Muhammad Shah’s accumulated treasures, including thousands of Colombian emeralds. Many were later incorporated into a jewelled globe to prevent theft (Figure 14).

Figure 9. Lady with a Lotus Petal, c.1760. Note the emeralds blended with pearls and rubies (courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London).

Figure 10. Mughal protective amulet inscribed with Throne Verse (Qur’an 2:255) (courtesy of the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait).

Figure 11. Mughal inscribed emerald cup (courtesy of the al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait).

Figure 12. The Topkapı Dagger, c.1746 (courtesy of the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul).

Figure 13. Persia’s Nadir Shah after the 1739 sack of Delhi (courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London).

The Topkapı Dagger was commissioned for Nadir Shah in 1746, but it appears he was already cursed by Mughal treasure. Obsessed with protecting his hoard and increasingly distrustful of his many subordinates, Nadir Shah lashed out at those whom he might have co-opted. He was assassinated in 1747, just in time for the Ottoman ambassadors carrying the emerald-handled dagger to find out before crossing the Persian frontier, allowing them to return to Istanbul. The Topkapı Dagger, which is also inset with an English watch at the top of the hilt, stands as a mute testament to early modern globalisation. New Granada emeralds were drafted into a special political mission only to be recalled and incorporated into an imperial museum anxious to proclaim its own glories.

Thus, the emeralds of the New World managed to conquer the Old, not just the courts and bourgeois parlours of Europe but also the palaces of the world’s richest monarchs, the Islamic emperors of the Near East and South Asia. Some Brahmanic rulers and even some Buddhists used Colombian emeralds in their jewelled and votive objects as well – examples may be found in India, Burma and Thailand – but nothing compared with the great stones of the gunpowder empires. And the Chinese? Well, they had jade.

Figure 14. Jewelled globe with emerald seas (courtesy of the National Bank of Iran, Tehran).

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