Earthenware tile, decorated in the cuerda seca technique with yellow, green, and manganese glazes

Ceramic tiles with calligraphy were used in the Mughal period in buildings of both stone and brick. A tile like this one was probably embedded in a wall separate from the other decoration. The text in a lobed cartouche was designed in elegant Nastaliq and reads, “Protected against the evil eye of misfortune.”

Tile decorations were much rarer in India than in Iran and the Ottoman Empire. The Mughals, however, renovated numerous older sepulchral monuments and mosques in the 17th century, and many were decorated with colorful tiles in the process. Today it is impossible to say where a tile like this one comes from.