Judged guilty by the Inquisition, a condemned man is slowly tortured.

For the Mughals, Ottomans, and Safavids green was, as it remains for all Muslims, the color of Paradise, reserved for the Prophet Muhammad and his descendants. Tapping a wide range of sources, Kris Lane traces the complex web of global trading networks that funneled emeralds from backland South America to populous Asian capitals between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Lane reveals the bloody conquest wars and forced labor regimes that...