In the pre-modern Arab world, the candle was the preferred means of lighting. When in the course of the 10^th century ce the ekphrastic poetry came into fashion, the description of the candle was soon one of the more popular topics of this genre. Additionally, the candle served in poetry as a secundum comparationis, which is the theme of this contribution based on poetry from the 10^th–14^th centuries ce. Apart from some verses dealing with the inanimate nature and animals, the candle comparisons served to describe people in all of their phenomena: the body and its parts, emotions such as grief and love, social behavior, status and religion.