THIS refers to ES. Aijazuddin`s article `The Koh-i-Noor stolen or given?` (May 8). I would add what William Dalrymple has to say in his book Return of a King on page one.

`The largest diamond in the world the Koh-i-Noor, or Mountain of Light, had beenmissing for more than a decade, but such was the turbulence of the times that no attempt had been made to find it. Shah Zaman, Shuja`s elder brother and predecessor on the throne of Afghanistan, was said to have hidden the gem shortly before being captured and blinded by his enemies.

`So Shah Shuja summoned his blind brother and questioned him on the whereabouts of their fathers` most famous jewel: was it really true that he knew where it was hidden? Shah Zaman revealed that nine years earlier he had slipped the Koh-i-Noor into a crack in the wall of the fortress where he was first seized and bound. Shah Shuja immediately dispatched a few of his most trusted men to find the Koh-i-Noor. They found the Koh-i-Noor with a Shinwari Sheikh who in his ignorance was using it as a paperweight for his official papers. They impounded it and brought it to the King.

Gohar Ayub Khan Islamabad