Walk on your average Egyptian street and you will be bombarded with smells you’ve never even imagined possible. This Egyptian tradition of perfuming ourselves is fully manifested when you take a walk in the Hussein district of old Cairo and see dozens of perfumers begging for you to take a whiff of their offerings. To fully grasp why we love fragrances so much in Egypt, we have to go back to the very beginning.
It should come as no surprise (and probably because it's in this magazine) that fragrances originate from Ancient Egypt as Egyptians would burn up flowers, woods and other fragrant materials to make resins and then use that resin as incense and apply it on themselves (similar to what Khaleeji women do nowadays). According to Mcgill University’s website, The ancients also used these fragrances as offerings for the gods to make sure that they also presented offerings with the best scent possible. Egyptians would use honey, myrrh, frankincense, sandalwood, lotus and many other scents we still use to this day. Egyptian queens like Cleopatra and Hatshepsut would even take perfume to their graves in order to bring them into the afterlife, so needless to say, we used to value perfume a whole lot.
Perfume in Egypt took a step towards the modern direction in the Hellenistic age as the Greeks were the first to use fragrance oils as we know them today. They would apply the oil to their body similar to what we do now and that practice went on in Egypt as the Roman age went by up to the Islamic age. Prophet Mohamad (pbuh) would perfume himself almost everyday and according to the Sunnah he said: “The taking of a bath on Friday is compulsory for every male Muslim who has attained the age of puberty and the cleaning of his teeth with Miswaak , and the using of perfume if it is available.” Thereafter, muslims and Arabs would forever be enchanted with perfumery.
The medieval islamic art of making perfumes would spread to Egypt, and the art of decanting flowers into oil, usings Mysks with musk mixed with other fragrances and using the most esteemed fragrance of Agarwood (Oud) would be widespread across rich and poor alike. It should be said that this style of perfume, where oils without alcohol and mysks that are rubbed would be applied directly on skin, is the true heritage of fragrance in Egypt, and the western style of spraying alcohol mixed with perfume only came into Egypt about 100 years ago.
Mohamad from Otoor Morad (عطور مراد) says that this style of western perfume became popular after the British occupation and when the Egyptian nobility started to buy designer fragrances from abroad. Nowadays, he says that this style is basically what dominates the fragrance market in Egypt and Egypt has fully transitioned away from actually making the oils themselves with the Exception of the company that makes Khamas Khamsat of course.
In the historic Al Hussein district, you can find dozens of perfumers and spice sellers who put on display their many scents, incense sticks and Mysks. This beating heart of medieval Cairo is home to ElSalam Perfumes, a small perfume store that sits in front of the old Cairo market. The worker there, Sa’ad, walked me through the perfume industry in Egypt nowadays. “Now we only sell perfumes from oils we import from abroad, these are the same oils used in popular perfumes like Sauvage, Scandal or Blue de Chanel, but a grade lower in quality.” He went on to say that these same labs produce the oils for international brands, and most brands, and that no one in Egypt actually produces oils on their own anymore.
He went on to show me how he mixes his perfumes after showing me a range of his variety of perfumes: first he added the stabilizing agent, then he added the alcohol and lastly he added his ready-made oil. Afterwards, he started mixing them all together with a syringe by blowing air into it several times and viola, you have yourself an affordable ready made perfume. “The smell will get stronger as it starts to macerate, so keep it closed for a while”, he added upon giving me the finished product.
While we may not produce the same oils that we once did back in the golden days of the caliphate or use resins like the Pharaohs, Egypt still has a strong tradition of perfume and fragrance and nothing shows that more than the vibrant perfume industry living and breathing in El Hussein.