Just got back from a week-end in Beirut... It was professional but I did manage to slip in a little fragrant exploration. I asked the chauffeur if he knew about a shop where I could find some attars and he took me to a high-end shop called Abdul Samad Al Qurashi. The company is based in Dubaï.

There were jars upon jars lined up on shelves, all of them with Arabic labels. I didn't know quite what to ask for so I started by smelling oudh-based scents, then lots of different compositions. It was a very unusual experience, as I don't have any reference concerning Middle-Eastern perfumery. Smelling an oil-based scent with no alcohol got me quite flustered, there's not actual olfactory pyramid I could detect. Even the white musk didn't smell like anything like the white musk we know from Western perfumery.

Apparently they use ingredients from all over the world, since one of the blends I smelled was "flowers from Grasse", the SA told me.

There was one quite wonderful extract of Ta'if roses: 400 dollars an ounce! All of the fragrances were terribly expensive. Many were touted as being "composed for royalty"...

I have since found out that there is a branch on the Avenue George V in Paris, but before I venture further into this realm, I was wondering if anyone of you can tell me more about it?

I enjoy Middle Eastern fragrances! They are a bit strong & harsh in the beginning, but they dry down beautifully!

There is one I absolutely LOVE! Its called Sheikha Hissa.

And yes, Tai'f rose is very expensive...so are Ouds.

I've been told that some fragrances ARE named after Royalty.

Who is it by, where can it be found?

All I know is the musk/amber paste I get from relatives and friends in the middle east.
There's also a rose oil that I like a lot, but it comes in an unlabeled vial...

You can't get it anymore & it IS / WAS quite expensive.

I've been told they will be making this in an EDP form soon. I sure hope so, & I hope it is SOOOOOOOOOOOOON!

When they do, I am THERE!

I only have a bit of the oil and I am holding on to that until they make more. I wear it very sparingly, and would probably wear it more often if I had more of it. It has a bit of chocolate in it.

Wow, sounds very exotic and interesting. I have no experience with Arabic oil perfumes, but I look forward to reading the responses.

We have many Indian gift shops near where I live with an amazing selection of attars.

Here is a link to the Ajmal website. Ajmal is one of the biggest producers of attar type perfumes.

http://www.ajmalperfume.com/home.aspx

Hi Stranger!

You know, you have me HOOKED on Sheikha Hissa! It is like a drug addiction.... the more I smell it, the more I want it, so I sniff it in small doses!

Now I know how an addict feels, however, I'd rather be addicted to perfume ANYDAY!

Enjoy your vacation! You have been missed!

Fragrant Hugs!

I have never travelled in the Mid East, but I do have a collection of oils from a company, Attar Bazaar that I have enjoyed for years. The honeysuckle is beautiful and I also like one entitled Janat-al-ferdou (I think my memory serves me right with the spelling!) I agree that the scents are quite different from sprays with alcohol, only a few drops are sufficient. Another scent adventure!

I am very much looking forward to reading you, I'm perfectly clueless about the subject and would love to explore it seriously.

Thanks for the info. Could you recommend anything from the Ajmal line?

Thanks for the recommendations. I can't access their website, though. And the two perfumes you mentioned don't appear on any Google or eBay search, so I guess they're not easily available outside the Middle-East.

KV, would you happen to know if they have an outlet in Beirut?

I'm planning to as soon as the heatwave subsides here in Paris -- it's not that I shy away from oriental fragrances in the heat, it's just the idea of walking from the métro to the shop that kills me.

This is all very interesting. I don't know much about Middle Eastern attars, but I would love to sniff some. The Ta'if Rose sounds scrumptious.

So how did the White Musk smell?

Oh dear lord, and here I am...an Attar Virgin.

Where should I start?

Any suggestions for a first-time sniffer? The Ajmal website doesn't seem to work.

How interesting. I had never heard of this house... although I think it's quite amusing that a Saudi perfume house is named after the greatest of Italian lovers, Giacomo Casanova! I'll try to hunt them down as they don't say where you can find their products on the website.

Thanks again!

this thread has me totally facinated... I did a little research online about Ta'if roses see this article

www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200408/the.roses.of.taif-.compilation..htm

no wonder they are so expensive!

Let's keep an eye out for Spadefoots sure to be upcoming accounts of her trip to Yemen. She went on from France after Maman and I came home. I am sure her nose was in heaven there!

What a wonderful thread! I'm fascinated by attars and will definitely check and recheck this discussion in future explorations. My one approx. find in this department so far is Nouf the Darling Princess oil - I have a decant and
am enthralled with it. My nose for notes is fledgling but I pick up rose, orange blossom and woodsy elements. It's heady and rich but light and clear at once and small doses persist. Searching for it online has definitely lead me to sites with scents in the hundreds and thousands of dollars and agarswood oil aged as long as fine wines and whiskies. Beautiful bottles, too.
http://www.onlineislamicstore.com/a3686.html

I've just tried the above link. It all looks fascinating but clearly the people who put up those sites do not believe in scent descriptions... No one fragrance has any notes described. I've been able to figure out that "Ward" means "rose" and "misski" means "musk", but that's about it. How frustrating !

I did lots of sniffing and some buying in Yemen. I bought mostly from al Rehab (Saudi, a regional powerhouse, big fancy shops in Jeddah, Aden and Sana'a) and al Sedae (smaller Yemeni company). I found that although the Arabian attars are oil based they are quite multidimensional and do develop over time, telling a complete story from the opening to drydown. I believe al Rehab has a website, and al Sedae's business card has a website but I couldn't find any such thing.
My favorite fragrance that I bought was a house concoction that has no name. It is the creation of a small shop called Abu Younis. Many shops create their own mixes (mokhalat means mixture, you'll see that word in a lot of perfume names) that are exclusive to them.
I think it's just a matter of time before some of the bigger houses (al Rehab http://www.al-rehab.com/old_site/EnProfile.php, Ajmal, al Haramain http://www.haramainperfumes.net/default.asp) open shops outside of the Arab world, given the increasing interest in perfume in general and the increasing interest in Arab culture in the west.
Here's a picture of a small portion of the wall space in Al Sedae's shop on Salam Street in Sana'a, just down from Bab al Yemen.

Spadefoot, tried the links, didn't get very far...

I've just found this site which is very slightly more explicit than most... I might try to order something "blind", as Killer Vavoom recommended.

http://www.arabianbazaar.com/index.html

St Andrews Girl asked me to add something to this thread. I just got back from the Middle East, where I visited a few perfume stores. I started off at a western-style chain retailer that sells mostly pink perfumes like Lacoste and Paris Hilton and Glow. These are wildly popular with the ladies, much more so than in the US. The Arabs prefer American fragrances to French ones. It's hard to find much European perfume, although most stores were well-stocked with Apparition by Ungaro (very expensive).

I visited several well-stocked local perfumers who dealt in oils. These were located in the downtown areas and looked much more low rent. Perfume oils come in 100ml glass labware vials, and the dealers dispense them into the bottle of your choice, using a hypodermic needle. They keep two large vials of ethyl alcohol (75%), one for rinsing the hypodermic, and the other for adding to the oils if you choose a western-style sprayer, rather than the traditional glass dram-size oil bottle. 90 percent of the product on the shelves of these retailers is knocked off. They have copies of all of the Ralph Lauren fragrances, all of the Calvin Kleins, Hugo Boss, Liz Claiborne, and so on. I had to explain to them that I already had a complete collection of European fragrances, and was only interested in buying "Attr Sharqi" (oriental perfume). 2 of the establishments I visited had a few of these. One was extremely well stocked, and proceded to empty its shelves of about 30-40 perfumes of Oriental pedigree. The shopkeep laid them on the counter and went through each fragrance in order according to its notes. Saudi perfumes came first. Then fruits, florals, resins, and finally musks (all of which were nasty, raw smelling beasts). I bought a dram each of Amwaj, Muthella, Tedellil, Rayhan, Sultan Al-Attour, a single note of Turkish Rose, and two Oud blends. (how much Oud is actually in the perfume wasn't specified). With the exception of Turkish rose (really nice), all of the perfumes are sweet to the degree of being cloying, more fruity than floral. Some of them smell like Angel, others like cough syrup, and some are very rich and spicy on top of all the sweetness. At $1.50 a piece, I was completely satisfied. I plan to mix them with some alcohol to find out what they really smell like. Out of the bottle, they're too overpowering to wear.

I didn't see anything from Al Rehab over there, and I was searching. I've seen it in the USA, and their products are great. Not expensive, either. Buy it in an Arab store and a jar of alcohol free solid perfume will set you back 4-6 bucks. I tried to buy some on the internet a few months back, but googling "Rehab Alcohol Free" brings back results for detox centers, not Arab perfumers.

I found some other interesting scents in a spice shop I visited. This shop had a good selection of fragrance oils from Spain, and I bought 3 drams of Spanish amber. They also had largish aluminum tins, each containing 1 kilo of perfume resin from Grasse (not further identified), but only in two fragrances-- amber and musk. The resin came in 1 inch squares. I bought 2 ambers and 3 musks. The amber is nicer than the musk. The last thing I bought was 100 grams of locally-produced musk in rock form (Misk Hajr). The Grasse bricks are soft enough that they can be rubbed directly onto the skin. I have no idea what they do with Misk Hajr, which is somewhat harder and doesn't exude much odor. I asked, and they couldn't give me a straight answer. They'd have to melt it or dissolve it in something, I think.

I visited two branches of a better-stocked European style store called Abu Shaqra. They had a selection that was better than Macy's and a little worse than Nordstrom's. At one of the branches, I asked the clerk to let me try some Terre d'Hermes. He refused, telling me it was a men's fragrance, and suggested I try Eau des Merveilles instead. Rather than spark an international incident by telling him how much I like to wear men's cologne, I backed off and sniffed politely at the Merveilles.

On a side note, American products sell at very high prices. I tried to buy some cheap shampoo and ended up getting charged US $7.50 for Johnson's baby shampoo, because it's a luxury item. Dove beauty products are considered so high-end that they're actually being knocked off by the Chinese.

Great report, little Annika! Thank you for posting through your jetlag.

Ah, that chasm between the glittering wealth of Gulf States and the rest of the Arab world. Grocery perfumes, of course. I don't imagine that Amouage is even available in Yemen or Syria or Morocco because the people who live in those places who can afford Amouage are popping over to Dubai or Paris for the weekend to shop, leaving the rest of the population to third rate houses. I would imagine that al Rehab is also considered third rate in the Gulf; in Yemen, it's on par with Haramain, but still valued and respected and craved.
Amouage strikes me as a status brand based more on ostentation than substance (they're pretty things that take no risks, and last about 15 minutes on my skin even when I pour the contents of the entire sample vial over my cleavage) the gold and crystal bottles as recognizable as the latest $100,000 European sports car.

I would encourage anyone with a good curiosity to order some reasonably priced attars unsniffed. Get together with five friends and order five different ones and split them up and review them for us here. I'm eager to read what more articulate writers with better noses than I have would have to say about them.

Your mention of Madini reminded me of its existence. I haven't been to Marrakech in quite a while... I've just ordered a few oils from them, and they have a sample programme!

Here's the link: http://madini.com/

They ship from the USA.

I'll also seek out Rasasi the next time I'm in Beirut, they have a shop there.

This is becoming a very instructive, not to mention exotic thread, keep feeding it!

I don't know if I even want any of these frags but I am really enjoying this thread. So interesting!

Oohhhhh I am sooooooooooo jealous, yet sooooooooooo happy for you guys to be able to enjoy all these places! * B I G sigh *