The Story of Ali Hafed — Acres of Diamonds

Conwell opens by explaining that he tailors this lecture to whatever town he is visiting, then hands the story to an old Arab guide who led his camel along the Tigris and Euphrates. The guide describes Ali Hafed, a wealthy and contented Persian farmer whose peace collapses the moment a traveling priest describes how much a diamond mine would be worth. Ali Hafed goes to bed that night poor, though nothing about his farm, orchards, or money has changed.

Hafed sells his land, leaves his family with a neighbor, and spends years wandering from the Mountains of the Moon through Palestine and across Europe hunting for a river of white sand that never appears. Broke and in rags on the shore at Barcelona, he drowns himself in an incoming tide, convinced his life has failed.

Back home, the man who bought Hafed's farm leads a camel to drink in the garden brook and notices a strange flash in the sand. The stone turns out to be a rough diamond. When the same priest returns and recognizes it, the two men dig through the garden and pull up gem after gem. That farm becomes the mine of Golconda, the richest diamond deposit in history, source of the Kohinoor and the Orloff crown jewels. The fortune Ali Hafed died searching for the world over had been sitting under his own wheat fields the entire time.