The Diamond Capital of the World — Surat cuts and polishes 90% of the world's diamonds, its Parsi community built some of India's most extraordinary heritage buildings, and Surati street food is a pilgrimage unto itself
Surat is a city of 7 million on the Tapi River in Gujarat — one of India's fastest-growing cities and the world capital of the diamond industry. Surat's diamond workshops cut and polish approximately 90% of the world's rough diamonds (including most of the diamonds in Tiffany, De Beers, and every major jewellery brand). The city's Parsi (Zoroastrian) community — who arrived from Persia in the 8th–10th centuries — built the finest collection of Parsi architecture in India and established the community's most important fire temples and towers of silence. Surati street food is one of India's mos…
Surat was the most important port city in Mughal India — the departure point for Hajj pilgrimages, the largest trading port on India's west coast, and the site of one of the British East India Company's first Indian factories (established 1612). The company's factory at Surat was the centre of British commercial operations in India before Bombay eclipsed it. Surat was sacked twice by Shivaji (1664, 1670) — the most dramatic of the Maratha raids on Mughal territories. The city's transformation into the global diamond hub began in the 1960s when Saurashtra and Surat entrepreneurs established sm…