They fashioned rings of silver and began wearing them; whereupon the Messenger of Allah ﷺ cast aside his own ring, and the people followed suit and cast aside theirs. Al-Bukhārī then mentioned this ḥadith in muʿallaq form through Ibrāhīm ibn Saʿd al-Zuhri al-Madanī, Shuʿayb ibn Abī Ḥamzah, and Ziyād ibn Saʿd al-Khurāsānī. Muslim (1) also recorded it through that same chain, while Abū Dāwūd alone cited ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khālid ibn Musāfir—all of them reporting from al-Zuhri, as Abū Dāwūd put it: “a ring of silver.”

The sound opinion, however, is that the ring he wore for only one day before discarding it was a gold ring, not a silver one, as is firmly established in the two Ṣaḥīḥs (2) from Mālik, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Dīnār, from Ibn ʿUmar. He said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ used to wear a gold ring; he cast it away and said, ‘I shall never wear it again,’ so the people threw away their rings as well.”

As for the silver ring, he wore it frequently, and it remained on his hand until he passed away—may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him. Its bezel was of the same metal, meaning it had no separate stone. Whoever claims that it bore the image of a person has made a remote and erroneous assertion, for the ring was entirely silver, bezel and all, and its engraving read “Muḥammad, the Messenger of Allah” in three lines:

Muḥammad
Messenger
Allah

It appears—Allah knows best—that the inscription was engraved in reverse so that the seal would stamp upright, as is customary. Some have maintained that the writing was upright and was stamped just as it appeared, yet the soundness of that view is doubtful; I know of no chain for it, either sound or weak.

The aḥādīth we have cited proving that he ﷺ possessed a silver ring rebut the reports we previously mentioned in the Sunan collections of Abū Dāwūd (3) and al-Nasāʾī (4), transmitted through Abū ʿAṭṭāb Sahl ibn Ḥammād al-Dallāl, from Abū Makīn Nūḥ ibn Rabīʿah, from Iyās ibn al-Ḥārith ibn Muʿayqīb ibn Abī Fāṭimah, from his grandfather, who said: “The Prophet’s ﷺ ring was of iron plated with silver.”

Its weakness is further underscored by the ḥadith related by Aḥmad (5), Abū Dāwūd (6), al-Tirmidhī (7), and al-Nasāʾī (8) from Abū Ṭaybah ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim al-Sulamī al-Marwazī, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Buraydah, from his father: A man came to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ wearing a ring of brass, and he said, “Why do I detect the odor of idols on you?”—so the man threw it away. He then returned wearing a ring of iron, whereupon the Prophet said, “Why do I see upon you the adornment of the people of the Fire?”—so he discarded it as well. Then he said, “O Messenger of Allah…"