The Jacob Diamond spent years hidden in a shoe, survived one of the most sensational legal battles of princely India and eventually ended up in the vaults of the Reserve Bank of India. Weighing 184.75 carats, it is one of the largest polished diamonds in the world and significantly larger than the Kohinoor. Yet its fame comes less from its size and more from the strange trail of intrigue, vanity, litigation and superstition that followed it for more than a century. In Hyderabad, it acquired the reputation of a *manhoos hira* or unlucky diamond. The story begins not in a treasury but in the extravagant world of the Nizams and a jeweller whose name would become permanently attached to the gem.
A giant stone looking for a royal buyer
