Mille-fleurs (in French), known in English as millefleur or mille-fleur literally means "thousand flowers" and refers to a background made of many small flowers and plants. It was an especially popular motif in tapestry and other applied arts and crafts during the Middle Ages in Europe. The term is also used to describe Oriental rugs with a similar design, originally Persian but later produced in much of the Middle East and Mughal India. The medieval European style may have been influenced by Persian miniatures or carpets. The Mughal emperors Shah Jahan (1627-1658) and Shah Aurangzeb (1658-1707) had a great appreciation for this particular style and they commissioned their weavers to replicate these fine delicate motifs in the carpets that adorned their palaces throughout India. In 1730 the Persian Shah Nadir Quli (1688-1747) conquered parts of India and returned home with countless treasures, including textiles and Millefleurs carpets that made a great impact on the decorative arts of Persia and the surrounding territories. A “millefleurs” carpet has a bottom which is livened up of a motive of latticework; every containing alveolus is a flower, of a big realism, is a palmette. Certain specialists see an Italian origin in this decor, also present in the Indian architectural decoration of the XVII^th century, and XVIII^th centuries, as besides on the whole decorative arts, notably, on rooms in nephrite set by precious stones. Several carpets adorned with these compositions are endowed with a line of a multicoloured silk chain, a characteristic of weavers from Lahore, Pakistan.