I'm old enough to have mainly used cursive in school and I definitely had the thought that it seemed like a vaguely arabic-inspired cursive when I saw it the flourishes on the D.
The flourishes in the D of that cover are exactly how I was taught to write the uppercase D in cursive at school. I remember (as a kid) thinking it was odd that to write a `D` one had to start by writing an `I`, but never questioned it.
But from looking at examples of cursive on google images, it seems like that form is no longer as prominent.