The arabesque , a vegetal design that is one of the most characteristic and recognisable features of Islamic art, bears a Western name that was in use as early as the seventeenth century to describe a type of Islamic ornament also emulated in European art. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the term acquired a more precise meaning, as art historians, taking a formalist and linear approach, began to classify and define this type of ornament and examine its possible sources, tracing its development to Late Antique and Sāsānian