Lord of fragrance

A rare insight into how ittars are made – By Adnan Adil

Sharif Ahmad knows the art of extracting and preserving the essential essence of anything that exudes fragrance. He opened a small crystal bottle, dipped his finger in the oily liquid and rubbed it on the back of my hand; it gave out a soothing, cooling smell of khus – a natural perfume oil, or ittar, he manufactures from the roots of a wild plant at his small perfumery in Lahore.

The intricate process of separating the minute quantity of oil perfume or ‘rooh’ or ‘absolute’ from wood or other substances is a rare skill that a few people practice in this country; the 52-year old Sharif Ahmad of Rehman Pura, Lahore is one of those who excel in manufacturing and blending ittars khus and rose in particular. A huge quantity of natural oil perfumes come from India and the synthetic ones from France.

Every December, Sharif Ahmad says, he gathers the roots of wild khus bush (Vetiver or V. Zizanioides) from Sialkot’s remote villages, boils the wood in a copper-made, silver-coated still or cauldron (deg), collects the steam through a bamboo-lined pipe and condenses it into an extract – a mixture of water and oil – in an air-tight copper pot placed in a water tub at his home-made small distillery. “The aroma can burn or lose its peculiarity if the steam touches any metal like copper or steel during the filtration process.”

Sharif then filters the extract to separate a thin layer of oil from the water and gets 40 ounces of khus scent (ittar) from a 40-kg load of the roots. The art of separating oil from water is the most delicate and labour-intensive part of the business. Sharif, and his trained staff, dip their fingers into water, lift the oil on finger-tips and transfer it to the other pot drip by drip. It takes around 12 hours to separate 10 grams of absolute or pure ittar from the distilled extract. “Since we separate the oil perfume on a small scale, we use traditional manual method. If we use a machine, the entire perfume (10-40 grams) will get lost by sticking to the machine’s body,” Sharif says. He says mechanical separators are used in France because they are good for perfumery at large scale.

The factory is littered with the residual khus wood that now would be used to line room coolers — the water passing through the khus-screen of water-coolers is spread by a fan for a pleasant, cooling effect. The residual filtered water of khus is also stored in bottles and presented for imparting fragrance to room-coolers’ water. Hundreds of artificial, synthetic essences closely resemble natural scents and are quite popular for being less expensive, but khus could not be imitated. Sharif says: “French perfumers tried to synthesize it, but the artificial compound was not pleasant.” This fragrance is only extracted in India and Pakistan. Khus plant is not grown by farmers; it is a wildly grown shrub and found mostly in the Saidpur, Chaprar and Kathiala areas of Sialkot district on the India-Pakistan border.

A civil engineer by training, Sharif adopted the occupation of ittar-manufacturing on the insistence of his father, Rasheed Ahmad, who practiced it for more than 60 years before he died in 1996 and had inherited it from his forefathers in Qanoj, UP, India. Rasheed brought the skill to Karachi and bequeathed it to his sons. Sharif manufactures ittars and blends perfumes to supply them to more than 200 perfume shops spread across the country. He also runs a shop at Raiwind near Tableeghi Markaz where ittar remains in high demand by the devout for religious reasons.

Rose and Khus are found in abundance in Punjab alone, so Sharif mostly extracts their ittars. In the months of April and November, he collects Pakistani pink rose flowers from the farmers in Sahiwal and Sheikhupura and distills them to attain their essence. He says a pink rose garden in Badhu Malhi area, owned by Khushi Muhammad Arain, is centuries old. He brings tons of pink rose flowers from this garden and extracts rooh-e-gulab (rose ittar); 100 kg of rose petals yield only 10 grams of ‘absolute’ ittar, or in local measure, one tola of ittar from two and a half maund of petals. He says the older a rose bush the more the smell and the more the petals the greater the essence.

The perfumer says rose ittar cannot be attained from red rose or some other variety because they lack the aroma, peculiar to Pakistani pink rose. He grew up smelling perfumes and ittars and can distinguish between the natural and the synthetic, and the new and the old. Sharif says: “My nose is what matters most in making a decision about the purity of an ittar; there is no other formula.” Ittars, unlike synthetic perfumes, have no expiry; they last long. The older an ittar, the better and expensive it gets. Connoisseurs like the old ittars.

Ittars are extracted from different parts of plants including leaves (hina), flowers (rose, kewra), roots (khus), wood (Oud, Sandal), or soil (gil) or animal glands (mushk). When I visited Sharif, he was distilling turmeric’s essence. “We use scents from turmeric and some 21 other herbs to manufacture an ittar called Shamama.” Other ingredients include scents extracted from camphor, saffron, Amber (saliva from a certain sea fish), musk-e-naafe or Kasturi (the extract from naval of the black deer), Eucalyptus, Oud, Amber, Civet (a cat’s glands) etc. He says Civet’s oil perfume is used as ‘fixative” to give durability to Shamama.

The ‘absolute’ or ‘rooh’ of natural ittars are quite expensive such as 10 grams (nearly one tola or an ounce) of rose ittar costs up to Rs 10,000 and 10 grams of Kasturi is priced at Rs 60,000. This makes pure ittar out of reach of common man and they are rarely available in the market. In a standard ittar, sandal oil was mixed with ‘absolute’ perfume but as now it has also become quite expensive, perfumers mostly use Eucalyptus and Patchouli oils for mixing.

Perfumers also mix natural and synthetic rose perfumes to bring the cost down. For example, Sharif says, in one kilogramme of synthetic rose perfume, only one gram of natural rose ittar is mixed. Natural Amber ittar is obtained from fish and is rare. Usually, artificial amber mixed with a minute quantity of natural Amber is available in the market that is attained from wax. The perfumer says ittars are worn according to the seasons. Khus, Motia and Jasmine are summer smells. Gil (the aroma of earth after the first raindrops) in the monsoon; Hina, Amber, Shamama, Oud and Kasturi (or Mushk-e-Nafe – an extract from the naval of the black deer), are suitable for winter. Gulab is used all year round. Kewra, Gil and Molsari are used in the rainy season. Most ittar connoisseurs are elderly people above the age of 60, while the young like imported synthetic perfumes. Sharif says more than 400 varieties of perfumes are available in the market out of which only 20 to 25 are natural ittars, or realistically speaking, blends of ittars and additives.

Sharif claims to be the only person who prepares perfume oil from khus.

About KH

Lord of fragrance