Pictorial texts also known as calligrams arranged in mirror symmetry were popular in the Ottoman Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries among the Bektashi order, where it often carried mystical associations. The origins of this mirror writing tradition may date to the pre-Islamic period in rock inscriptions of the western Arabian peninsula. A recent study that has revealed the oldest examples of mirror writing in Greek traces the early appearance of mirror inscriptions to Late Antiquity, specifically to Syria-Palestine, Egypt, and Constantinople. In Islamic art, mirror calligraphy is known as muthanna or musenna.