Queen Noor’s Diamond Tiara

Queen Noor of Jordan celebrates her birthday today, and we’re celebrating along with her by featuring her intriguing diamond tiara.

Queen Noor, born Lisa Halaby, was the fourth wife of King Hussein of Jordan. When they married in 1978, he presented his new bride with a diamond tiara in the form of an abstract sunburst. We don’t know precisely who made this new tiara, but we do know that Hussein had previously turned to Cartier to make a similar tiara for his late third wife, Queen Alia.

Noor wore the tiara throughout her husband’s reign, though it seems that at some point the tiara was altered. It was transformed from a kokoshnik-shaped tiara that rose to a single point into the tiara you see in these images, which is sort of similar in profile to the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland Tiara. In the moving image above, Noor wears the tiara at the 1995 Guildhall banquet in London that commemorated the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

She also wore the tiara at several high-profile state visits, including Queen Elizabeth II’s state visit to Jordan in 1984 and the Jordanian state visit to Denmark in 1998. The Danish state visit took place less than a year before King Hussein died of cancer. Since then, Noor has continued to have a prominent public life, supporting several important charitable causes, but she has kept her tiara firmly locked away.