How fashion rings are symbols which remind us of the Divine

It is fashionable at the moment for men to wear rings set with Ottoman-style red, blue and yellow gems. Perhaps the success of series like Ertegrul are driving this attractive revival of traditional jewellery.  But are you aware of the symbolism behind the stones used in these rings?  And do you know how they can actually link to the Qur’an?

In Muslim cultures, rubies and sapphires have always been appreciated more than diamonds.  And, along with everything else in the world, the Muslim would look at gems with two eyes: the eye of appreciation of its beauty, and they eye which sees it as a sign of the Real hidden or revealed within creation.  It was believed that rubies and sapphires could be created from red sulphur or red brimstone through alchemy.  For this reason, sulphur symbolised the soul, and rubies came to symbolise the divine.  According to Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, in his book the Jewels of the Qur’an, the most precious were red, as it was the rarest; this symbolised the Divine essence (ذات).  The blue sapphires symbolised God’s attributes, and the yellow symbolised His works.  Al-Ghazali noted that there are many “jewel” verses within the Qur’an, the verses which refer to Allah’s essence, attributes and works.  He also noted that there were some verses like green gems, which referred to the afterlife, and some he said were like pearls. The verse like pearls are the ones concerning the path of advancing towards God through devotion and perseverance and remembrance of God and opposing that which distracts from Him.  This, according to Al-Ghazali, is the main purpose of life.  Through devotion and purification, the mirror of the soul is cleansed of the rust and dirt which stops it reflecting divine light and which keep people veiled from the Real.  There were three more important categories of Qur’anic verses, according to Al-Ghazali, and these are: the stories of the Prophets and the fate of earlier peoples, which he likens to fragrant ambergris and oud whose scent reaches and affects us, verses concerning laws (ie sharia) to help us on our journey towards God, (musk) which he likened to service stations and hotels for travellers, and discussion of the arguments of disbelievers.

Not only did Al-Ghazali define these six categories of verses, he explained about how they led to the development of the Qur’an sciences concerned with the meaning of Qu’ran. He discusses elsewhere the sciences relating to language, which he calls the shell of the Qur’an.  The table below sets out this relationship.

This table shows that the language sciences developed from a need to be clear about the language of Qur’an, in order to access the discourse contained within it.  The discourse itself can be divided into two parts: the first is about the parts of religion which everybody can see: stories, arguments and laws.  The second column is about the inner meaning of religion – which is our knowledge and understanding (ma’rifa) of Allah and our intentions and inner nature and what happens when we die.  Because this cannot be seen as clearly, and some people think of it as mystical and esoteric – something spiritual but also optional.

However, you can see from this table, that Al-Ghazali has identified the path to God as one of the Islamic sciences situated in the inner kernel of the religion, meaning that it is integral to the religion and in fact the main purpose of religion. After all, the purpose of religion is to worship the creator, not just to live in a moral or well-organised society or to have a superior polemic with which to win debates. It is helpful to people trying to understand “Sufism” as a concept and to see how it fits in with the rest of Islam in a way that is not abstruse or optional at all.

So when you see a ring with a beautiful stone, don’t just think of it as an object of beauty or a marker of cultural identity, but think about the symbolism behind it, how it points to the Real, and about our main purpose in life.