The figure at the center of this roundel is a seated musician, with his legs crossed, playing a lute. He wears a long robe that covers his body completely. At the edge of the roundel, between plain borders, is an inscription in Naskh calligraphy. The inscription gives the name and titles of a ruler, who has not yet been identified with a historical person: “Imād al-dawla was al-dīn malik al-umarā’ Jahān Pahlavān ‘Umar ibn al-Husain Nusra.” A very similar roundel, of yellowish green glass, possibly made with the same stamp, is in the al-Sabah Collection in Kuwait. The purpose of these objects, which are found in a variety of colors and have a repertoire of ornament that includes birds and animals, falconers, and people riding on elephants, is uncertain. Perhaps the best indication of their function was found during excavations at Old Termez (Tirmidh), Uzbekistan, in 1937–1939. Here, in the ruins of a medieval palace, archaeologists uncovered part of a window grating set with glass roundels. One of the roundels was inscribed with the name and title of one Bahrām Shāh: either the ruler of Ghazni (a city in central Afghanistan) from 1117 to 1157 or the ruler of Termez in 1205. The roundels from Termez, therefore, seem to have adorned a colored glass window. The roundel in the al-Sabah Collection is published in Stefano Carboni, Glass from Islamic Lands, New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001, p. 274, no. 73c.