The History of Perfume: From the Incense Route to Synthetic Materials

In short: People first knew perfume as smoke from something burned and as oil rubbed on the body, and later as distilled water for sprinkling. The ancient Egyptians traded in incense with the land of Punt, and caravans carried frankincense and myrrh from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean. In the Arab-Islamic civilization, the works attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan, and later al-Kindi and al-Zahrawi, described distillation apparatus, and rose water was distilled in Iraq and Persia from at least the 9th century CE. The earliest known mention of rose oil comes from the court of Jahangir in India in 1611–1612. Alcohol then entered perfumery in Europe, and the synthesis of coumarin in 1868 was a turning point toward synthetic materials.

Table of contents

• Perfume began as smoke
• Perfume in the ancient world
• Egypt and the land of Punt
• The Incense Route in Arabia
• The Greeks and oil as a carrier of scent
• Perfume in the Arab-Islamic civilization
• Four ways to extract scents
• Al-Kindi and the Book of the Chemistry of Perfume and Distillations
• Rose water in Iraq and Persia
• Did Ibn Sina invent rose distillation?
• The discovery of rose oil
• Europe: alcohol, eau de Cologne and Grasse
• The modern era: synthetic materials
• Regulating the industry and protecting rare materials
• Frequently asked questions
• Read also
• References

In many majlis gatherings, guests are sprinkled with rose water, and then the incense burner is passed around with the smoke of oud. This familiar scene holds two of the oldest forms of perfume: distilled water that is sprinkled, and smoke rising from a burning substance. Alcohol-based perfume is centuries younger than both.

Perfume began as smoke

One of the oldest forms of scenting is burning aromatic materials, and the English word perfume still carries this form. It came from French, and its Latin root combines per, meaning “through”, and fumare, meaning “to smoke”; its first meaning, in the 16th century, was “fumes from a burning substance” [1]. As for when people first began to use scents, there is no definite date, and we found no reliable source for the precise dates some articles give for the “first perfume”.

Perfume in the ancient world

In antiquity, perfume materials travelled through long-distance trade: by sea from the land of Punt to Egypt [2], and overland along caravan routes from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean [3]. The Greeks, for their part, made oil the carrier of scent [8].

Egypt and the land of Punt

For hundreds of years, the land of Punt was one of ancient Egypt’s strongest trading partners, and it was from Punt that the Egyptians imported fine incense [2]. The location of Punt is still debated among researchers, and it was most likely in the southern Red Sea region [2].

On the walls of Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahari are reliefs of a sea voyage to Punt, dating to about 1473–1458 BCE. Hatshepsut was the first ruler of the New Kingdom to resume maritime trade with Punt [2].

The Egyptians also used aromatic materials in mummification. The canopic jars of a noblewoman named Senetnay, who lived around 1450 BCE, held traces of an embalming mixture whose ingredients show how far Egyptian trade reached: beeswax, plant oil, fats, bitumen and resins from the pine family, along with another resin that most likely came from Pistacia trees [9].

The Greeks knew a perfume they called “the Egyptian”, whose ingredients included cinnamon and myrrh. Theophrastus counts it among the longest-lasting perfumes, and reports that a perfumer kept it in his shop for eight years and it stayed good [8].

The Incense Route in Arabia

Caravans carried frankincense and myrrh overland from Yemen and Oman to the Mediterranean [3]. The frankincense trade was one of the most important trading activities of the ancient and medieval world, and in antiquity it reached from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea to Mesopotamia, India and China [10]. In Dhofar, Oman, frankincense trees of the species Boswellia sacra still stand at the Land of Frankincense site, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, alongside the remains of two ports: Khor Rori, which operated from the 4th century BCE to the 5th century CE, and Al-Baleed, which operated from the 8th to the 16th century CE [10].

The caravan routes formed a network stretching more than two thousand kilometers. They flourished from the 3rd century BCE to the 2nd century CE, and the Nabataeans built towns and fortresses along them in the Negev Desert [3].

Another Nabataean city is Hegra (Mada’in Salih) in Saudi Arabia, on a trade route linking the Arabian Peninsula with the Mediterranean world and Asia. Its rock-cut tombs date from between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE [11].

Farther south, where the Empty Quarter meets the Tuwaiq plateau, Al-Faw was an important caravan station on the route from Najran to central and eastern Arabia. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Kinda and remained inhabited from the middle of the 1st millennium BCE to around the 5th century CE [12].

The Greeks and oil as a carrier of scent

The Greeks made oil the carrier of scent because, for them, the aim of compounding a perfume was to make its scent last. So says the philosopher Theophrastus in “Concerning Odours”, his treatise devoted to perfumes [8].

Theophrastus notes that perfumes are made from different parts of the plant: the flower, the leaf, the twigs, the root, the wood, the fruit and the gum. Rose perfume, for example, is made from the flower [8].

Perfume in the Arab-Islamic civilization

The Islamic world knew perfume in three forms, all of them old: thick pastes rubbed onto the body, liquid floral oils applied to the skin, and distilled waters that were sprinkled [4]. Its materials were plant-based, such as flowers, bark, wood, roots and resins, and animal-based, such as ambergris, musk and civet [4].

Four ways to extract scents

Scents were extracted in that era by four main methods [4]:

Method	How it was done	Examples
Steeping (without heat)	Fresh flower petals are soaked in a base oil and replaced every few days, several times over; the oil is then filtered and kept in a tightly sealed glass bottle	Jasmine, rose, violet and bitter orange
Cooking (with heat)	Solid materials are moistened and ground, then heated in the oil, left to settle and then filtered	Cloves, cardamom, saffron, and sandalwood and oud shavings
Fumigation	The base material of a paste is fumigated with the smoke of an aromatic substance	Oud, costus and adhfar
Distillation	Flowers are heated in a still, and the distilled waters are collected	Rose water, and willow blossom water (bidmishk)

Base oils included sesame, olive and sweet almond, as well as ben oil, which was preferred because its scent is neutral and it does not turn rancid quickly [4].

Distillation needs special apparatus. It was known at least from the beginning of Islam, and its origins may go back to the Greek alchemists of Alexandria [4]. Good descriptions of its apparatus are found in the works attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan of Kufa (8th century CE), and in al-Kindi of Basra and al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis) of Cordoba (died about 1013 CE) [4] [13]. Two methods were known: distillation directly over the fire or in a pot of ash, and distillation in a water bath. The water bath was used to distill flower waters, including al-Kindi’s rose water [4] [13].

Al-Kindi and the Book of the Chemistry of Perfume and Distillations

Al-Kindi's Book of the Chemistry of Perfume and Distillations (Kitab Kimiya’ al-‘Itr wa-l-Tas‘idat) is the main reference for studying how perfumes were prepared in that era [4]. Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (about 800–870 CE) was a philosopher born in Basra who worked in Baghdad at the court of the Abbasid caliphate [14].

Distillation in the book does not stop at the red rose. It distills myrtle, jasmine, spikenard, willow blossom and stock, and materials other than flowers too, such as lemon, Syrian apple peel, saffron and camphor [4]. Rose water was added to perfumes to strengthen and fix their scent, and was in turn strengthened with sandalwood and musk [4].

More than a century after al-Kindi, the physician and surgeon Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi described several kinds of rose water distillation in his book al-Tasrif (Kitab al-Tasrif li-man ‘ajiza ‘an al-ta’lif) [4].

Rose water in Iraq and Persia

Rose water was distilled in large quantities in Persia and Iraq from at least the 9th century CE [4]. Among the best known was the rose water of Gur, today’s Firuzabad in the province of Fars. It was proverbial, and was exported to distant lands east and west, as al-Tha‘alibi reports [15].

Did Ibn Sina invent rose distillation?

Rose water distillation came before Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and we know of no reliable source that makes him the first to distill it, even though many articles online repeat this attribution.

Ibn Sina lived from about 970 to 1037 CE, and his best-known medical work is the Canon (al-Qanun) [16]. Al-Kindi died around 870 CE, and he described the distillation of red rose water at least a century before Ibn Sina was born [13] [14]. Al-Razi (died 925 CE) listed the cucurbit, the vessel in which the flowers are heated, and the alembic, in which the vapor condenses, among the tools for making rose water, and al-Khwarizmi, in Mafatih al-‘Ulum, mentioned the rose water maker and his tools [13].

The discovery of rose oil

The earliest known mention of rose oil dates to 1611–1612, at the court of the Mughal emperor Jahangir in India, although rose water had been distilled for centuries before that. Rose water is not the same as rose oil: the oil is an essential oil that floats in small amounts on the surface of rose water after it cools [4].

Jahangir relates in his memoirs that his wife's mother, the mother of Nur Jahan, noticed a thin layer forming on the surface of hot rose water as it was poured into vessels, and she collected it little by little. Knowledge of rose oil then spread across the whole Islamic world in the 17th and 18th centuries [4].

Europe: alcohol, eau de Cologne and Grasse

In Europe, Arnold of Villanova (1235–1312) isolated rosemary oil and used it dissolved in alcohol [4]. Alcohol then became a means of extracting scents from plants and resins [5].

One of the best-known scented waters in Europe is eau de Cologne. In Cologne, Germany, Johann Maria Farina (1685–1766) developed a scented water based on bergamot, lemon and orange rather than heavy musk extracts, and named it “Eau de Cologne” after the city. The name later became the name of a whole category of perfumes [17].

In southern France, from at least the 16th century, the cultivation of perfume plants, the processing of natural materials and the art of perfume composition developed in the Grasse region. In 2018, UNESCO inscribed these skills on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity [18].

The modern era: synthetic materials

For many centuries, perfumes relied on natural materials, until the chemist William Henry Perkin synthesized coumarin in 1868, which has a sweet scent close to that of hay [5] [6].

In 1882, the house of Houbigant launched Fougère Royale, which contained about 10% coumarin and gave its name to a whole family of perfumes, the fougère family [6]. It was composed of coumarin, oakmoss, geranium and bergamot [5]. Perfumes built on synthetic materials followed, and aromatic materials came within reach of ordinary people [5].

Musk is one of the clearest examples. It originally came from the gland of the musk deer, and because natural musk is so expensive, most of the musk used today is chemically synthesized [6]. One of the earliest synthetic musks was musk ketone, discovered by accident in 1894 [5].

Synthesis has another reason besides price. It is the only way to supply some materials in sufficient quantities when their natural sources are scarce, or when producing them is unethical, as with musk and civet taken from animals [6]. Civet is a secretion from the glands of civet cats, and it was used in large amounts in classic perfumes. Because of its cost, and the suffering of these animals in captivity and during its extraction, most perfumers deny using natural civet, and substitutes have been made based on civetone, the main component of natural civet [6].

Regulating the industry and protecting rare materials

The International Fragrance Association (IFRA) was founded in 1973. It brings together fragrance companies and national associations, and sets standards for the safe use of fragrance ingredients, in a voluntary system run by the industry [7].

High demand for oud, the overharvesting of its trees and its illegal trade led to its listing in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) [19]: the species Aquilaria malaccensis in 1995 (effective 16 February 1995), then the remaining species of the genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops in 2004 (effective 12 January 2005) [20] [21]. This appendix is for species that are not necessarily now threatened with extinction but may become so unless their trade is subject to strict regulation, and exporting specimens of them requires, as a rule, a prior export permit [22].

Frequently asked questions

Which is older: oil-based or alcohol-based perfume?

Oil, by a long way. Theophrastus described oil as a carrier for perfumes in Greek times [8], while alcohol as a solvent for essential oils turns up in Europe in the 13th century, with Arnold of Villanova [4].

Read also

• Musk in Perfumery: Animal, Synthetic and Its Types
• Perfume Ingredients: From Raw Material to Note
• Types of Bakhoor: A Guide to Oud, Frankincense, Maamoul and Mabsous
• Autumn Fragrance Notes: How to Choose Your Perfume in Saudi Weather

References

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3. UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Incense Route – Desert Cities in the Negev (1107). whc.unesco.org/en/list/1107. Accessed 27 September 2026.
4. Aubaile-Sallenave F. ʿAṬR. Encyclopaedia Iranica, Vol. III, Fasc. 1, pp. 14–16. 1987, updated 2011. iranicaonline.org/articles/atr-perfume. Accessed 27 September 2026.
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8. Theophrastus. Concerning Odours. In: Enquiry into Plants, Vol. II. Hort A, translator. Loeb Classical Library 79. London: Heinemann; 1916. archive.org. Accessed 27 September 2026.
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17. Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt (DPMA). World's oldest perfume manufacturer: Farina. Brands with history. dpma.de. Accessed 27 September 2026.
18. UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. The skills related to perfume in Pays de Grasse: the cultivation of perfume plants, the knowledge and processing of natural raw materials, and the art of perfume composition. 2018. ich.unesco.org. Accessed 27 September 2026.
19. Shivanand P, Arbie NF, Krishnamoorthy S, Ahmad N. Agarwood—The Fragrant Molecules of a Wounded Tree. Molecules. 2022;27(11):3386. PMC9181942. Accessed 27 September 2026.
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Prepared and edited by: Sedr Al-Khaleej Perfumes team

Last reviewed: 16 October 2026