Golconda, a legendary mining city in India, was the diamond capital of the world for millennia, right into the eighteenth century. Some of the most famous diamonds in history came from Golconda.
The former capital of an Islamic sultanate of the same name, Golconda (or Golkonda) is located on the eastern flank of the Deccan plateau in India, near the modern city of Hyderabad. Now in ruins, Golconda was leveled by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1688.
Golconda was famous for its diamond trade. For thousands of years the mines surrounding it were the world’s only source of diamonds, until new deposits were found in Brazil in the eighteenth century and in South Africa in the nineteenth.
Some of the world’s most beautiful, most legendary stones apparently came from Golconda, such as the Hope, Polar Star, and Tiger Tears diamonds.
Golconda’s diamond deposits have now been mined out.