All the Perfumes of Arabia by Kate Lord Brown

Perfume is the key to our memories – Kipling said ‘it makes our heartstrings crack’. It evokes people, a place, a time. Here in the Middle East, fragrance is highly prized, and enjoyed everywhere from malls scented with the delicious smell of incense and oud burning in gently smoking mabkharas, to the dedicated perfumeries found in every souk. 

 At home, incense is burned to fragrance robes, and perfume is offered as a refreshing gift for visitors. During my first trip in the Middle East, after dining with a princess/interior designer one night, she carried round a crystal bottle of sandalwood oil and anointed the wrists of her guests. It was a great honour, and the scent of sandalwood still evokes the sights and sounds of that trip more clearly now than any photograph.

Perfume comes from the Latin ‘per fumum’ meaning ‘through smoke’, and it is either extracted from the natural world, or created synthetically to produce scents that cannot be stabilised, or to invent entirely new ones unknown in nature. It was in Arabia that perfumes were first distilled. By about 1500 many of today’s scents such as cedar wood, calamus, costus, rose, rosemary, spike, and incense had been extracted. In the 1900’s chemical characterisation of the oils led to expansion of production, and paved the way for the modern perfume industry.

The finest perfumes may have up to 100 ingredients, and while there are only four or five taste qualities there are over 40,000 identifiable odours. After being sprayed onto the skin, each fragrance goes through a number of stages. At first, you smell the top note, which is volatile and refreshing. Then, as the fragrance melds with your skin, a full middle note becomes apparent. Finally, when the perfume fully reacts with your own chemistry, the base or end note persists. Floral perfumes focus on jasmine, rose, lily of the valley or gardenia. Spicy scents are carnation, clove, cinnamon, or nutmeg. The woody fragrances often present in aftershaves are vetiver, sandalwood, cedar wood, and oak moss. Blends of these basic groups create the perfumes we love. For example, ‘Orientals’ are woody, mossy, and spicy with vanilla or balsam, and musk or civet accents. ‘Herbals’ focus on fresh clover and sweet grass. The ‘Leather-tobacco’ fragrances contain (not surprisingly), leather, tobacco and birch tar. Lighter Aldehydic fragrances have fruity characters. Men’s fragrances often have a vibrant blend of citrus, spice, leather, lavender, fern or woody elements. Here, it is Oud, the dark resinous heart of Agarwood that is most highly prized, and it forms the core of favourite perfumes for the home and individual.

Alongside all the familiar brand name perfumes, you find stalls and boutiques selling what looks like kindling or driftwood. Even in supermarkets like Carrefour you will find a section selling incense and resinous perfumed wood alongside the shisha pipes and charcoal.

Browsing the jewel-like gilded bottles in one of the local souks, you may think that the elaborate, elegant designs are a new trend, but even in early history packaging was integral to the whole luxurious experience. The earliest known perfume bottle dates to 1000 BC. Gold, silver, enamel, copper, glass and porcelain bottles gained favour during 18th century, and the 19th century saw a trend for classical designs. During the 1920’s Lalique revived the interest in bottles with moulded glass creations that set the trend for today’s dazzling range of designs. It was a joy researching the history of perfume making for 'The Perfume Garden', and realising how our love affair with fragrance goes back to the earliest of times. There is something magical, alchemical about the way perfume conjures the past - I wonder what your favourite scents are, or whether you have come across interesting historical fragrances in your research?