This marble tile features a niche with an oil lamp whose burning flame rises high above the lamp’s edge. The name of God, “Allah,” is repeated on each side of the lamp. This motif has a symbolic significance because of the Koran’s sura 24, “the Light Verse.” While God is compared there to the light of the heavens and earth, according to the early Muslim theologians, a burning oil lamp in a niche is a metaphor of Muhammad’s prophetic light. The marble tile was probably used as a mihrab – the prayer niche in a mosque toward which the devout Muslim turns in prayer. The sturdy palmettes in the central wheel ornament are a special Ghaznavid variant of the form of decoration that evolved in Abbasid Iraq.