NEW YORK — When the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia were inaugurated at the Metropolitan Museum in November, few visitors were ungracious enough to ask why the book published on the occasion is titled “Masterpieces From the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

The department, of course, has not changed its name. The longer denomination echoes the preference that art historians like the head of the Islamic department Sheila Canby have for historically accurate characterizations. Ms. Canby, who has devoted a lifetime of research to Iranian studies, said, “This has crystallized a real issue in the field that we have been calling ‘Islamic art.”’

The denial of cultural identity in such a meaningless phrase is deeply resented in those Islamic lands, which have ancient cultures that are considerably longer than any West European nation. Most Western scholars appear to be unaware of it.

Yet, the phrase spread in the later 19th century, largely because of the French. The notion of an “Art Musulman” received significant museum credentials at an exhibition held in 1878 at the Paris Trocadéro and was set in concrete following the first important art show of works of art from the “Arab lands, Turkey, Iran,” etc..., at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1903.