Featured ID gemstone in antique Dagestan rings please.

Managed to buy these rare antique Dagestan (Caucasus) rings for even less than a song. They are high grade silver, fineness higher than sterling, with Byzantine style enamel and facet cut stones.
When I bought them online I thought the stones were glass. But once the rings arrived I saw no bubbles, so I decided to test them. They have a hardness of 8 on the Mohs scale.
I think they could be spinels, because I can't think of anything else of that hardness and colour. They have no pleochroism, which rules out topaz, I think.
Dagestan is in the Caucasus region of Russia, and home to many ethnicities. It is on the Caspian sea, so there has always been trade with Iran and Central Asia. Russia is a country with a lot of gemstones, spinels and many others.
The detailed photos are of the stone with the most damage, so you can see the way it fractures. The white on the chips is just in the photos, not in real life.
The rings are closed at the back of the stones.
What do you think?
Thanks for looking.

 

Garnet maybe?

 

I also thought of garnet, but that is 7-7.5 Mohs.
At first I thought morganite, 7,5-8, which to my memory also has a fuchsia-like variety, but when I googled it I only saw pale pink morganite.

 

What method did you use to test the hardness?

 

A diamond tester, also tests other stones. It has been reliable on other stones, including garnets.

 

Possibly synthetic spinel.

 

Sorry, should have added, they also fluoresce. Synthetic pink spinel doesn't.

 

Synthetic rubies fluoresce and can sometimes be around 8 on the moh scale.

 

Thanks, didn't know they could be that low on the scale. Still pretty high, but you know what I mean.

 

never seen anything like em.......but I like em !
The ones on each side must have come from the same maker.
They're all very rich looking !!
Nice find !

 

Thanks.
Yes, they certainly have a sumptuous Byzantine look. You rarely find these for sale, and certainly not for the price I paid. If you find Dagestan jewellery it is usually in the general Caucasian niello (blackened design) style, which is beautiful, but these are far more rare. Needless to say I also have Caucasian niello pieces.

 

These are wonderful

 

Are you sure they are stone? The abrasions along the bevels in pics 2 and 3 don't look like what I would see on a stone. Look through a loupe to see if there are any bubbles in them.

 

All gemstones can abrade at facet junctions including diamonds.

 

You probably missed these lines, don't worry, happens to me all the time:

And yes, I studied them through a loupe, always do. Always have one next to my laptop as well, it tends to get in the way of my mouse.

Absolutely, if you're used to handling antique jewellery you see it a lot.

 

Here is something on gemstone chipping:

"Gemstone Toughness = resistance to breaking and chipping
The way the atoms of a gem bond together and the strength of these bonds determine a gemstone’s toughness, or how well a gemstone resists breaking and chipping. The toughness scale used in scientific literature is called a fracture toughness scale. The toughness scale measures the work required to separate two surfaces of a crystal along a certain crystallographic plane. Values range from 225,000 for nephrite and 120,000 for jadeite, considered very tough gems, to 600 for corundum, which is not as tough.
Values for diamond generally range from 5,000 along the stone’s cleavage planes to over 8,000. Even though diamonds are considered tough, they can break more easily in certain directions, and a hard blow can cleave or fracture the gem. Diamonds with extremely thin girdles and ones with exposed points like those cut as pears and marquises are susceptible to breakage or chipping."
http://4cs.gia.edu/en-us/blog/more-than-mohs-scale-gem-durability/