Description
Bakhoor, بخور, is an Arabic name indicating a blend of natural and traditional ingredients, mainly wood chips – Sandalwood, Aloe or Agarwood – soaked in perfumed oils such as musk, rose, amber, tonka bean, bergamot, neroli or in other fragrant materials such as spices, balms or ointments. These various ingredients are then compressed to form small bricks intended to be burned on certain solemn occasions. This millennia-old use finds its origins among the nomadic tribes of the Arabian Levant who, once their camp was set up, burned Bakhoor chips to perfume the atmosphere, purify the air and banish evil spirits. Nowadays, bakhoor is used in haute parfumerie and incense.
Oud, عود, the quintessence of the olfactory journey to the Orient, whose cost far surpasses that of gold, is an oil extracted from the resinous hardwood or agarwood of the tropical Aquilaria tree native to India and Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and eastern Papua New Guinea. Highly original, because the precious resin is the product of the tree’s natural defence mechanism activated generally around injured or buried parts of the trunk when infected by fungi, animal grazing, insect attack or microbial invasion. This precious oil has been prized throughout history: used in perfumes, incense, medicines, in aromatherapy and during cultural and religious ceremonies. And highly sophisticated, because in its wake – woody, smoky, leathery, animal, with almost pharmaceutical hints appreciated only by true initiates of the highest modern perfumery – it resurrects the most ancient facets of the art of perfumery: Eros and the sacred.
This marriage of these two olfactory palettes offers us an incense with a note of agarwood: amber; woody; earthy; smoky; pyrogenic; powerful and mystical.
