Shah Jahan ascended in 1628 and decided his court needed a throne worthy of the dynasty. The Mughals already had one — the modest gilded chair Akbar had used — but Shah Jahan, who would soon commission the Taj Mahal, was not a man for modest. He summoned his master goldsmith, Bebadal Khan, and ordered the construction of a piece of furniture that would, by the time it was finished, be worth more than the building he was about to raise for his dead wife.

Seven years, 1,150 kilos of gold

Bebadal Khan worked on the throne for seven years. He completed it in 1635, in time for Shah Jahan's coronation anniversary. The contemporary chronicler Abdul Hamid Lahori, in the Padshahnama, gives the specifications. The throne was 3.6 metres long, 2.4 metres wide, and stood on four legs of gold. The seat platform was reached by three steps. Twelve emerald columns supported a canopy. On top of the canopy were two enamelled peacocks — tausan — facing each other across a jewelled tree, their tail feathers spread, eyes set with rubies. From the peacocks the throne took its name: Takht-e-Taus, the Throne of the Peacocks.

Roughly 1,150 kilograms of gold went into its frame. About 230 kilograms of gemstones were set into it. The chronicler lists them — by weight, by colour, by origin. Among them:

— The Koh-i-Noor diamond (then ~186 carats, before re-cutting), already 300 years old by Shah Jahan's time, taken by Babur from the Lodi family.
— The Timur Ruby (361 carats — technically a spinel, not a ruby), originally in the treasury of Timur.
— The Akbar Shah Diamond, 116 carats.
— The Great Mogul Diamond, the largest then known in the world — possibly 280 carats — described by the French jeweller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, who saw it in 1665.
— Plus emeralds the size of palms, sapphires, pearls, and inlay work that has never been catalogued in full.

Tavernier was admitted to see the throne and was so stunned he stopped writing in mid-sentence. His estimate, in the currency of the time: ten million rupees. The Taj Mahal had cost about five million.

One night in February 1739

For 104 years the throne sat in the Diwan-i-Khas of the Red Fort, under the inscription that called the room "heaven on earth, this is it, this is it, this is it." Shah Jahan sat on it. Aurangzeb sat on it. After Aurangzeb's death in 1707 the empire began to fracture. By the 1730s the central government in Delhi was nominally led by the weak emperor Muhammad Shah Rangila — "the colourful," for his patronage of music and poetry, less so for his rule.

In late 1738 the Persian conqueror Nadir Shah Afshar crossed the Indus. He had taken Iran, Afghanistan, and the Hindu Kush. He defeated the Mughal army at Karnal on 24 February 1739 in a battle that lasted three hours. On 20 March he entered Delhi at the head of his cavalry. Muhammad Shah received him in the Diwan-i-Khas. Nadir Shah sat on the Peacock Throne.

Three days later a rumour spread through Delhi that Nadir Shah was dead. The city rose. Persian soldiers were lynched in the streets. Nadir, alive and furious, ordered a general massacre. For eight hours on 22 March, his troops killed indiscriminately in Chandni Chowk and the bazaars. The death toll was placed by contemporaries at 30,000. The Yamuna ran red. Muhammad Shah, on his knees, begged for the killing to stop. Nadir relented — and then demanded an indemnity.

What he loaded onto his camel train when he left Delhi on 5 May 1739 was the entire moveable treasury of the Mughals. The chronicles list 700 elephants, 4,000 camels, and 12,000 horses bearing loot. At the centre of the convoy, on a specially built carriage, was Takht-e-Taus.

What survives

The throne never returned to Delhi. Nadir Shah was assassinated by his own officers in 1747. The throne was broken up. Some pieces went to the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani, who carried them off in turn. Others stayed in Persia.

The famous jewels scattered:

— The Koh-i-Noor passed through Afghan, Sikh, and finally British hands. It was given to Queen Victoria in 1849 after the annexation of Punjab. It now sits in the front cross of the crown of the Queen Mother, in the Tower of London.
— The Timur Ruby was given by Maharaja Ranjit Singh's heir to the British East India Company in 1851. It is now in the necklace worn under the Imperial State Crown.
— The Daria-i-Noor — once the matched twin of the Koh-i-Noor — stayed in Iran. It is in the Iranian Crown Jewels in Tehran.
— The Great Mogul Diamond disappears from the record after 1747. Some scholars argue it was re-cut and became the Orlov diamond, now in the Russian Diamond Fund.

Later Mughal emperors had imitation Peacock Thrones made. Nadir Shah's Persian successors did the same. None of them matched the original. The original is gone — split into seven or eight pieces, walking around the British, Iranian, and Russian crown collections under different names.

You can still stand in the Diwan-i-Khas where the throne sat. The marble platform — the takht-shaped indentation in the floor where its legs rested — is still visible inside the chamber. The inscription is still there. The throne is not.