An arabesque is a pattern on tapestry for instance that is intricate and interwoven. Here is one perhaps seminal expression of the pattern and reading about it some this morning I found out that it s a. an Islamic form or from that heritage and there is a "western" form of it that probably is more Moorish and turned up in the Mediterranean costal European societies; Spain, south France, Italy which is even more intricate.
Debussy, the French composer, wrote a couple pieces called Arabesques in about 1888. I know this because I was something of a Debussy studier- my dissertation area - and his early works, this one below for instance, appealed to me and still does to this day. Debussy was from a region in France that had this influence and he was also taken by Spain and all things Spanish - including of course the Moorish influence so it is no wonderment that he would evoke and invoke a tapestry.
