Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early

Modern India: Textualisation,

Transmissions and Assimilations

Amrita Chattopadhyay*

This article brings to focus the material life of early modern perfumes in the
Indian subcontinent. It offers a ‘documentary archaeology’ by foreground-
ing texts that recorded perfumes in their stage of production and prepara-
tion. By studying this corpus, it presents perfumes as a locale where craft,
technology and labour interacted with each other in blending scientific
knowledge with the natural landscape. With a focus on textualised perfume
recipes, listed aromatic ingredients and distillation methods, it examines the
various shifts, transitions, cross-cultural material borrowings and finally
the assimilations that occurred in the olfactory landscape of an Indo-
Islamicate political empire, especially during the Mughal rule in India. A
rich perfume-repository, where divergences and acculturations took place
could be best understood by identifying the various methods and processes in
which material practices and literary traditions were shaping each other. In
understanding this, it goes beyond the ephemerality of perfumes and argues
in favour of a craft that was labour-intensive, skill-based, technologically
innovative and culturally adaptive. Finally, it explores the diversification
of its forms, significance of receptacles and amplification of its produc-
tion, both in texts and in practice, to highlight the pervasive materiality of
Indo-Islamicate perfumes in early modern India.

Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
*

E-mail: [email protected]

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

© The Author(s), 2023  Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC/
Melbourne
DOI: 10.1177/09719458231206883
 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  315

Keywords: Perfume, early modern India, distillation, labour, receptacles, aromatic

ingredients, material practices

Introduction
The field of material culture in Indian history, especially for the early
modern period, is still a nascent one. Despite the burgeoning scholarship
since the 1980s, the existing works exhibit hesitance in assigning agency
to objects with transience and impermanent materiality. Perfume, a
quintessential ephemeral object, thus, has remained in the shadows of
the studies on material culture and the historical narratives on it, albeit
a few.1 This article is an attempt to reinstate perfumes in the material
milieu of early modern South Asia and to examine it as a site of
knowledge production, artistic experiments and acculturation. With
a particular focus on the period of Mughal rule in India (sixteenth–
eighteenth centuries), it offers an analysis of the process of its material-
being, cultural borrowings and technological innovations that endowed
perfumes with value and significance. Whether as a labour-intensive
craft, experience or practice, perfumes in various material forms were a
historical by-product of the contemporary literary milieu. They found a
lasting ‘material-life’2 via textual documentation in thick descriptive
words and under the aegis of state patronage. This article, thereby,
shifts from the stylistic visual engagement with objects and navigates
through object-people matrices through the approach of ‘documentary
archaeology’—‘a method that allows us to treat the words that describe
them as fragments or traces left by things that once existed’.3

1
See Gode, ‘Studies in Indian Cultural History’, vol. 1, 3–100; Shulman, ‘The Scent
of Memory in Hindu South India’; Husain, ‘Scent in the Islamic Garden’; McHugh,
‘Sandalwood and Carrion’; Flatt, ‘Spices, Smell and Spells’, 3–21. For recent work on
olfactory senses in Mughal culinary practices, see Vermani, ‘The Perfumed Palate’, 107–29.
This subject has been worked upon in an interactive exhibit titled ‘Bagh-e Hind’. See Roth,
‘Visual Nosegays’; Lalwani, ‘Bagh-e Hind’.
2
See Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value’, 3–63; Kopytoff,
‘The Cultural Biography of Things’, 64. Also see, Gosden and Marshall, ‘The Cultural
Biography of Objects’, 169–78; Mytum, ‘Artefact Biography’, 111–27; Laviolette,
‘Introduction: Storing and Storying the Serendipity of Objects’, 13.
3
Smail, ‘Persons and Things’, 379–99.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

316  Amrita Chattopadhyay

The foundational framework for this specimen of textual investiga-

tion for Medieval India has been laid by scholars such as P. K. Gode4 and
Irfan Habib,5 who provide a suitable entry point to study objects as one
of the many cultural productions or as a craft or technology. To this end,
the article primarily focuses on perfume treatises and a collection of
court chronicles, administrative texts, biographies, travel accounts and
household manuals to understand the changes and continuities in pro-
duction mechanisms of perfumes. The sources in their descriptive
literary capacity as well as numerical specificity imbue early modern
perfumes in the Indian subcontinent with a unique materiality and
material-life embedded in the world of words.
India has been a fitting host to a distinctive perfumery tradition. James
McHugh points to the copious presence of a perfume culture in ancient
India deemed valuable in Sanskrit texts and in the courtly, religious and
other Indic traditions.6 While retaining the earlier forms, the medieval
and the early modern periods saw the addition of new features intro-
duced by and borrowed from the ‘Islamicate’7 empires in India and the
Persianate influences that came with them. This article takes a closer
look at the process of this acculturation.8 It traces this development by
bringing into focus the textual representation of perfume as a craft, a
state-run enterprise and a laborious skill-based vocation pursued meticu-
lously in the period under study.

Perfumes in Early Modern Indic Literature

The textual genre of erotica (kāma) produced in the earlier centuries
placed perfume-making as one of the chief art forms of love-making.
Adding on to this genre within the ‘Sanskrit cosmopolis’9 and literary
tradition of pre-modern South Asia, a fourteenth-century lesser-studied
medieval text on erotics composed in Sanskrit, Nagarasarvasva
(‘Complete Townsman’ or ‘A Complete Man about Town’) by Padmasri,

4
Gode, ‘Studies in Cultural History’, vol.1, 3–100.
5
Habib, ‘Technological Changes and Society, 13th and 14th Centuries’, 139–61.
6
McHugh, Sandalwood and Carrion.
7
See Gilmartin and Lawrence, ‘Introduction’, 2.
8
McHugh, Sandalwood and Carrion, 117.
9
Pollock, The Language of the Gods, 11–14.
 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352
 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  317

discusses perfume-making at length.10 As argued by Siegfried Lienhard,

it is a text composed by ‘a married Nepalese Vajracarya, presumably and
respectably permitted to write about erotic matters’.11 This work, called
‘later Kamasutra’ by Daud Ali,12 describes how the body should be
monitored to enhance love through mastering certain knowledge and
art forms which include perfumery and the techniques that constitute
them. The author furthermore dedicates a chapter to the technology of
perfume-making and its significance in defining love, a lover’s body and
enhancing the conditions of conjugality. As also studied in details by
James McHugh, the text throws detailed light on a valuable range of
aromatic ingredients such as musk (kastūrī), camphor (karpūra), saffron
(kesara), spikenard (jatāmānsī), claw-shaped marine snail (nakha),
white sandalwood (safed candana), lignum aloes (aguru), jaggery
(guṛa), nutmeg (jāyphal), small cardamon (chhotī īlaīchī), fistful grass
(nāgar muṭṭhā), clove (lavanga), bay leaf (tejpāta), imported aromatic
Arabian resin (śilḥaka), Indian olibanum or fragrant resin (kunduru),
benzoin resin (śaileya), black pepper or fragrant flower (śyāma), tailed
pepper (śītalacīnī), bitumen or storax (śilajīt), gum resin (guggulu),
scented grass (khas), storax or cardamon oil (śilāras) and other aromatics
are used to prepare scents for making fragrant dwelling-spaces
(gṛihavāsa), aromatic water ( jalavāsa), aromatic dentifrice (mukhavāsa),
fragrant hair (keśapatavasa or gandharasa), betel-nuts ( pūgavāsa),
aromatic spice (catussama), fragrant powder (cūrṇa), unguents
(udvartana or ubtana), lamp-wicks (dīpvartī) and incense sticks
(dhūpavartī). Perfumes were endowed with unique Sanskritic names
such as Ratināthakāntā (incense stick meaning ‘Beloved of the God of
Love’), Malāynila (perfume water meaning ‘Breeze from the Malaya
mountains’) and so forth.13 These were made from expensive aromatics
that were either locally produced or imported from various parts of the
world. The right person from the urban gentry had to procure them and

10
Ali, ‘Padmasri’s Nagarasarvasva and the World of Medieval Kamasastra’, 41; McHugh,
‘The Art and Science of Perfumery in the Nagarasarvasva’, 208.
11
Lienhard, ‘Observations Concerning a Buddhist text on Erotics: Nagarasarvasav of
Padmasri’, 96–123.
12
Ali, ‘Padmasri’s Nagarasarvasva and the World of Medieval Kamasastra’, 45.
13
Padmasri, Nagarasarvasva, 24–33; Also in, McHugh, ‘The Art and Science of
Perfumery in the Nagarasarvasva’, 207–28.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

318  Amrita Chattopadhyay

carefully blend the right kind of perfumes that could kindle lust
and desire.14
In the same milieu of Indic literary culture, another fourteenth-
century text remains significant in highlighting the nuances of the craft
of Indian perfumery. The Dhatutpatti (‘Origin of the Minerals’) is a
text primarily on metals by Thakkura Pheru, a Khalji15 official and a
Jain polymath of deep knowledge and many qualities who wrote on
scientific and technical subjects. This text foregrounds the properties
and provenance of aromatic items such as camphor, aloe wood,
sandalwood, musk and saffron, alongside detailing the techniques of
preparation.16 It furnishes unique preparatory methods in the verses
and hymns (ślokah), noting, for example, if the skin of very dark-
skinned wild buffalos are rubbed and burnt in fire, it produces good
perfume.17 A kind of combustible incense (dahānga var dhūp) with
a unique smell can be prepared when ingredients such as myrrh, an
aromatic gum-resin (mūr), spikenard ( jatāmānsi), fragrant herb
(kuṭaja), medicinal herbal plant (wālaka/bālaka), aromatic variant or
marine shell with a fishy smell (nakha), sandalwood, lignum aloes,
fistful grass (muṭṭhā) and oil of cardamom (silāras)18 are pounded and
mixed in equal proportions.19 The text associates the visual with the
olfactory by touching upon the idea of ‘white smell’ and ‘black smell’,
white smell being produced from white sandal and camphor while
‘black smell’ was obtained when spikenard and herbal plants were
perfumed with musk.20 The inclusion of the art of perfume-making in
this medieval manual of metallurgy simultaneously assigns perfumery
as a scientific episteme within the larger Indic world of knowledge in
this period.

14
Padmasri, Nagarasarvasva, 23–24; Also in McHugh, ‘The Art and Science of
Perfumery in the Nagarasarvasva’, 211.
15
A Turko-Afghan dynasty that held the seat of power of the Delhi Sultanate and ruled
a large part of the Indian subcontinent from 1290 to 1320 ad.
16
Pheru, Thakkura Pheru’s Rayanaparikkha, 10; Pheru, The Dravyapariksa of
Thakkura Pheru, 10–11.
17
Pheru, Dravya Pariksha aur Dhatutpatti, 18.
18
I have adhered to the spelling in the source-text. Hence silāras is spelled differently
here than the previous mention.
19
Pheru, Dravya Pariksha aur Dhatutpatti, 19.
20
Ibid.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  319

Perfumes in Early Modern Persian Treatises

A late thirteenth or early fourteenth-century Persian treatise on perfumes
and scents titled Nuzhatu’l Qulub (‘Pleasure of the Hearts’) composed
by Sayyid Husain Mahmud presumably under the patronage of one of
the Khalji emperors, positions perfume as a cultural object within the
Indo-Islamicate traditions of cultural and epistemic borrowings.
Admirable qualities (ṣifāt) and preparatory methods of simple and com-
pound perfumes are elaborated in detail in 17 chapters and sections.
Aromatics such as ambergris (‘anbar), musk (mushk), camphor (kāfūr),
saffron (za‘frān/zarnab), frankincense (lobān) agarwood (‘ud) and san-
dalwood (ṣandal) are used recurrently as key ingredients for various per-
fumes. Compound perfumes (‘abīr) required floral substances such as
fragrant rose (gul-i gītī, gulāb-i shahī), essence of rose (‘arq-i gul),
kewda (kīwrah), chrysanthemum (sīwtī) jasmine (chamīlī), blue lotus or
water lily (nīlofer) and others.21 For a specific kind of perfume, good
quality aloe wood and fragrant sandalwood had to be mixed, soaked in
rose water for three nights and then dried. After that, half a diram22 of
amber, half a diram of pure musk and a small amount of young, good
quality camphor had to be dissolved in the rose-water solution. The
essence had to be stirred well until it became a single perfume, after
which, thin and clean kewda flowers and jasmines were mixed and put
on the top of a glass in which the perfume was stored. This kept the per-
fume fragrant and when it was sprayed in a gathering or in special assem-
blies, the whole setting became fragrant. Simultaneously, if this perfume
was rubbed on the face and the limbs, it stimulated the temperament and

21
Mahmud, Nuzhatu’l Qulub, MS.1898, ff. 18–19.
22
Weights and measurements in Indo-Persian manuscripts have been usually expressed
in ser, surkh, tola, māsha, dām, āsār/ser and maunds/man or in other quantifiable units
such as number of bottles or cups that accompany their preparation procedures., whereby
1 rattī = 1.75 grains or Gunja seed (1 grain = 0.064 grams); 8 rattīs = 1 māsha (= 0.9 grams);
12 māshas = 1 tola (= 10.88 grams); 80 tolas = 1 Akbarī ser (= 870.89 grams), 1 ser = 30
dām; 1 dām= 1 tola 8 māsha 7 rattīs; 40 ser = 1 Akbarī man /maund (= 34.83 kilograms).
During the time of Shah Jahan, there was an increase in the value of the weights and the
standard of measurement became 1 ser = 40 dām with 40 ser =1 man remaining constant. It
was also expressed by the unit of currency of dīnār (gold coin) and the diram/dramcha (silver
coin), whereby 1 dinar = 1 3/7 diram = 1 misqāl = 96 barely grains; See Abul Fazl, Ain-i
Akbari, vol. 1, 16–37; Haider, ‘International Trade in Precious Metals and Monetary’, 237–54.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

320  Amrita Chattopadhyay

senses, and intensified the soul.23 In another perfume recipe, the primary
ingredients were good quality sandalwood mixed with half ser of agar-
wood oil, half ser of silāras (storax or cardamom oil), four diram of
saffron, two diram of black odoriferous root (baleh-i sīyāh), two diram
of white odoriferous root (baleh-i safīd) and one diram of camphor. This
mixture was pounded and added with rose water, made into a three-days’
preserve, filled into a container and half ser of frankincense was put into
it. After that, one diram of musk and half diram of ambergris were added
and for every hundred diram measure of the mixture, two teaspoons of
saffron and camphor were inserted in it. Once the mixture turned out to
be of good quality, it could be sprinkled in assemblies and at private
gatherings to make the location fragrant. Thereby, it would stimulate the
temperament, increase joy and bring positive benefits.24
Unlike the Indic texts, this treatise elaborates the process of distilla-
tion (chakānīdan) for perfumes, like that of first-class perfumed agar-
wood oil catering to the royal demands. It was undertaken, firstly, by
coarsely grinding (jowkoob) 20 to 30 dirams of the wood of aloes, fol-
lowed by mixing with 4 dirams of royal rose water (gulāb-i shahī) and
then dried. After that, five dirams of pure frankincense was added on
aloe wood and cooked well. This was to be followed by the addition of
four dirams of pure ambergris, three dirams of cardamom oil in the
cooking mixture. Eighteen dirams of high-quality sesame oil and four
dirams of pure beeswax were added on top of it. A cooking pot made of
glass (kuloy-i shīsheh) was brought and prepared for the collection by
covering it with paper (kāghaẕ) and putting a flower pod on top of it. The
neck of the bottle was supposed to be of the measure of five fingers and
the above-mentioned mixture would be filled in with a straw. After that,
a pot was brought and a hole was made in the middle of it. The neck of
the previous vessel was inserted and balanced in a manner that it did not
touch the ground. The said pot was then put in a vessel and put on fire on
top of the glass for three hours (sā’at). The perfume thus collected could
gratify individuals, delight gatherings and its smell was associated
with black colour.25 Besides glass, Chinese porcelain vessels and

23
Mahmud, Nuzhatu’l Qulub, MS.1898, ff. 18–19.
24
Ibid., ff. 25–26.
25
Ibid., ff. 37–38.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  321

containers (ẓurf-i chīnī, ṣahn-i chīnī) were used for mixing and drying of
the ingredients for these kinds of perfumes.26
The textualisation of elaborate perfume recipes was added to the liter-
ary practices catering to the court and royal penchant for fine things and
pleasurable pursuits through the fifteenth-century illustrated Persian
manuscript Ni’matnamah-i Nasirshahi (‘Nasir Shah’s Book of Delights’).
It was written for Sultan Ghiyasuddin Khalji (1469–1500 ad) and com-
pleted by his son Nasiruddin Shah (1500–1510 ad) of the Malwa
Sultanate (1392–1562 ad) in Central India with its capital in Mandu.27
This text upholds the craft and technology of perfume preparation as a
matter of delight and dexterity catering to the royal tastes of the kings of
the Malwa Sultanate. The oft-discussed text remains a critical surviving
artefact documenting the perfumery practices of a regional kingdom in
Medieval India. In continuation with the practices described in Nuzhatu’l
Qulub, it further elaborates the processes of steam distillation of aro-
matic ingredients, illustrates distillation stills, recommends the use of
hand-fans as cooling mechanisms and testifies to the increasing use of
ingredients such as rose, aloe wood, orange and sesame oil28 for the prep-
aration of distilled perfumes such as Bukhūr29 and Chūwah.30 In ways, it
serves as a fitting document testifying the transfer of power from the
Delhi Sultanate to the Mughal rule in Islamicate India and simultaneous
political reorientations affecting the imperial centre as well as the
regional kingdoms such as the Malwa Sultanate along with its cultural
reproductions.
The later centuries saw similar or possibly more tempestuous matura-
tion of perfume as a craft in India that allows reconsideration and
re-contestation of the history of pre-colonial South Asia, long held as
insular, unsophisticated and resistant to innovation, especially in the
field of science and technology.31 The production and circulation of

26
Ibid., ff. 24, 29, 37.
27
Anonymous, The N’imatnama Manuscript of the Sultans of Mandu.
28
Ibid. (MS. Facsimile), ff. 103b, 108a, 126b, 127a, 128b,163a–b, 174b.
29
Ibid., ff. 128b–129b.
30
Ibid., ff. 165a–167b.
31
Irfan Habib challenges the long-held assumption that before the eighteenth century,
the industrial technology of India lacked sophistication and was incapable of innovation.
He concentrates on various arts and crafts where change was clearly visible. Among the
various sectors he refers to the innovation that took place in perfume-making and the art

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

322  Amrita Chattopadhyay

manuscripts catering to perfumes linked the craft with royal eminence

and integrated it into the fold of the Mughal state through court patron-
age and material practices. This was an imperial imperative leading
to the growth of a dynamic and syncretic Indo-Islamicate perfumery
culture. Built on the existing Indic patterns and the advent of Islamicate
culture, perfume flourished as a site of acculturation and hybrid materiality.

Perfumes in the Literary Productions

of the Mughal Empire
The most important textual evidence for perfume during the Mughal
period comes from Abul Fazl’s (the most revered court historian of
Mughal Emperor Akbar from 1579 to 1602 ad) Ain-i Akbari, the second
part of Akbarnama. It is a detailed and majestic account of Akbar’s
reign (r. 1556–1605 ad) and devotes a chapter to the variety of perfume
ingredients, its prices, procedures of preparation and the associated
technology. This text is crucial in documenting perfume-making as a
state-sponsored, factory-based craft within the folds of imperial patron-
age. Based on natural ingredients, sourced from plants or animals, it is a
meticulous account of a great variety of simple and compound perfumes.
Through land control, organisation of agricultural labour for cultivation
and collecting raw materials,32 knowledge of alchemy33 and artistic
finery, the state articulated a language of power and its aesthetic affilia-
tions. Either locally procured or cultivated under the Mughal regime or
imported through maritime trade networks and land routes, the diverse
odoriferous substances were seamlessly blended within the physical
landscape as well as the world of commerce.34

of distillation. See Habib, ‘The Technology and Economy of Mughal India’, 1–2; Also, in
David Arnold’s work who critiques the Eurocentricism in interpreting pre-colonial Indian
science and technology. Arnold, The New Cambridge History of India, vol. III, part V, 4.
32
See Habib, Agrarian System of Mughal India.
33
Perfume is most often subsumed within the larger field of alchemy, and even for Indian
history, it has amassed some attention in the discussion on the history of chemistry in India.
See Deshpande, ‘History of Chemistry and Alchemy in India,’ 130.
34
For a detailed discussion on the source of these aromatics and their circulation, see
Chattopadhyay, ‘Perfumes in Early Modern India, 87–109; Chattopadhyay, ‘A Study of
Aromatic Woods,’ 76–117.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  323

Akbar created a separate department of perfumery (khushbūkhānah)

catering to the royal court and the imperial demand for aromatics. He
and his successors were also fond of perfumes both for personal as well
as for religious uses. The household space and the court-hall were con-
tinually scented with ambergris (‘anbar), aloewood (agar) and other
incenses. Liquid perfumes in the form of oils (‘araq, ‘itr, and rōghan)
were extracted from flowers and used for skin and hair.35 The 13 per-
fumes listed in this text have been provided with their material forms and
their respective ingredients specified with weights and amounts that
accompany their preparation procedures. They can be further classified
into incenses, liquid perfumes and scented soaps. This classification
allows us to identify distinct perfumes unique to the Mughals as each of
them has been assigned specialised names, recipes and usages. Perfumes
in the form of incense were listed as Gul Kāmah,36 Bukhūr37 and Fatīleh38.
Perfume, prepared and consumed in the form of scented soaps, was
named Ūbtaneh,39 Abirmāyah and Ghasūl,40 the latter being a liquid soap.
Argaja41 and Santūk42 were two signature Mughal perfumes meant for
the summer months and used to keep the skin fresh and cool. Rūḥ Afzā43
and Kishtah/Gashtah44 were ones with very fine smells meant to be burnt
in censers to keep the households and the palace setting fragrant. Both
were prepared in the form of cakes to be burnt in censers. Bārijāt or
Pārijāt45 and Chūwah were distilled form of liquid perfumes, kept in
bottles and applied either directly on bodies or on clothes.

35
Abul Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, vol 1, 74. See Nath, Private Life of the Mughals of India,
108–109.
36
A Persian word referring to the sediment which remains in manufacturing rose water.
37
Perfume or fragrance-diffuser.
38
Literally referring to a wick or fuse.
39
A Sanskrit word referring to a paste to be rubbed on the body.
40
Anything for washing the hands.
41
Argaja in the later years of the Mughal rule rose to prominence as a perfume and was
used as a rare, high-class and valuable gift to the important political figures. It was also
consumed by elites or nobles as a marker of their social status and class distinction. See
Khan, Maasir-i Alamgiri, 21–22; Anonymous, Mirzanama, MS. Add. 16, 819, f. 93b; Ahmed,
‘The British Museum Mirzanama’, 104.
42
A Sanskrit word meaning satisfaction.
43
Literally meaning increasing the spirits, prolonging life.
44
A Persian word referring to an aromatic compound.
45
An Indic word referring to the name of one of the heavenly trees brought to earth by
churning the ocean, according to the Hindu mythology.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

324  Amrita Chattopadhyay

These were compound perfumes made from simple aromatics or

fragrant substances like sandalwood (ṣandal), aloewood (agar or ‘ud),
red rose (gul-i surkh), rose water (gulāb-jal or ‘arq-i gulāb), jasmine oil
(rōghan-i chamīlī), extracts (āksīr) or essences (rōghan or ‘arq) of other
flowers like bitter orange blossom or neroli (bahār-i nāranj), violet root
(bīgh-i banafsha), aromatic flowering plant (kahīlah) or myrobalan
(halīleh), musk (mushk or kastūrī), civet (zabād), ambergris (‘anbar),
ladanum (lādan), frankincense (lobān), a root brought from Kashmir
(dhūp), nut grass or Cyperus rotundus (motah), another variant of grass
(ākankī), fragrant plant moss (ūshnah or chharīlah), camphor (kāfūr)
and so forth. The quantities and forms (solid or extracts) of these aromat-
ics varied with every preparation.
This period saw considerable standardisation of perfume-making as a
craft and preparatory process. The multi-stepped mechanism involved
washing and cleaning of the ingredients in alternate cold and warm water
to remove impurities, followed by the use of lemon juice (āb-i līmūn) to
get rid of the strong aroma of the raw materials. This had to be strained
in a piece of cotton cloth (pārcha), collected in a porcelain cup (chīnī
pīyālah) and washed with rose water three times. After this, the ingredi-
ents were either mixed with other ingredients or diluted with floral
extracts like that of jasmine (chamīlī or raī bel) or red roses (gul-i surkh)
or mixed with other aromatics and pounded with pure stone (sang-i
sumāq). In the case of incense, it was alternately mixed with rose water
or neroli, dried in the sun, pounded, mixed with essences, dried and pre-
pared. Whereas, in the case of aromatic pastes, pounding, boiling under
slow heat (naram ātish) in rose water, drying and blending would also
involve the use of beeswax (mūm) to render it the right consistency. In
the case of liquid perfumes, like Chūwah, steam distillation was funda-
mental. The aroma had to be executed by distilling small and moist aloe
wood on soft heat put in a glass bottle (shīsheh) smeared with a dried
mixture of clay (gil), cotton (panbeh) and husked rice (shālī). The glass
bottle would have an opening of the width of a finger and its neck would
be inserted upside down into another vessel (āwand) with a hole in the
middle and kept on a three-legged stand (seh pāīyeh). A cup (kāseh) of
water would be put at the bottom of the vessel in a way that the mouth of
the glass bottle reached the water-surface. After heating, the aloe woods
distilled out an ooze on the water-surface which had to be washed
with rose water to get the desired perfume. The washing procedure was

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  325

essential as the smell became more refined with the number of washes.46
Besides Ain, Tuzuk-i Jahangiri also mentions and commemorates the
discovery of the very famous Mughal rose-water perfume, ‘Itr-i Jahāngīrī
in 1612.47 Jahangir (r. 1605–1627 ad) was very pleased with its discov-
ery during his reign and admired its fine perfume, and remarked that he
regretted his father Akbar’s nostrils could not be ‘gratified with such
essences’.48
Other surviving biographical accounts and court chronicles produced
during the rule of the subsequent Mughal emperors like Shah Jahan
(r. 1628–1658 ad) and Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707 ad) take us through the
religious, cultural and political importance of perfumes in the Mughal
courts as well as household spaces of the Mughal elites and nobles.49
A wide range of court chronicles, foreign travel accounts and biogra-
phies testifies to the amplification of perfumery culture under the royal
patronage. Adding to that, during the seventeenth century, Bayaz-i
Khwushbui (‘The Notebook of Fragrance’) provides us with substantial
information about the traditional technology of perfume-making in
Mughal India. Of its 17 sections, dar-i itryat is one of the sections dedi-
cated to the methods of perfume-making and which was copied from
the Akbarnama with some modifications. The manual gives a list of
aromatic ingredients and specific amounts to be used and the methods of
perfume preparation. The process was carried out manually with acute
precision of time and quantity, skill, dexterity and knowledge involved
with the art and science of perfume preparation. The first few kinds of
perfumes and the associated ingredients (primarily natural and herbal
products) are more or less similar to the ones used in the Akbarnama.
Their quantities, however, are listed with some modifications concerning
the omission of a few old aromatics and the addition of some new ones.50
The text suggests different processes for each perfume and notes that
conducting this art was a very delicate process (Some of the ingredients

46
Abul Fazl, Ain-i Akbari (Persian), 66–67; Abul Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, vol. 1, 79–81.
47
Rose-perfume discovered by the Mughal Empress Noor Jahan and named after Emperor
Jahangir, signifying and immortalising his rule.
48
Jahangir, Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, 271–72. Also in Jahangir, The Jahangirnama, 163.
49
On consumption of Mughal perfumes, see Chattopadhyay, ‘Perfumes in 16th–18th
Century India’, 53–77.
50
Anonymous, Bayaz-i Khwushbui, MS. Or. 828, ff. 5a–12a.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

326  Amrita Chattopadhyay

and recipes have been translated and listed in the tables of the
appendix below).
The ingredients for the first kind of perfume, Santūk (see Table 1),
the second kind, namely Argaja (see Table 2), and the third kind, namely
Gul Kāmah (see Table 3) have been listed carefully in Bayaz. For Gul
Kāmah, the aromatics taken in the right proportions were first kneaded
in a porcelain dish, mixed with a ser of the elixir of roses, exposed and
dried in the sun. In the evening it was moistened with rose water and
extracted liquid of the orange-flower, and pounded with pure stone. The
mixture was kept like that for 10 days. After this, it was mixed with
neroli and then dried. Small amounts of black herbs (rīhān or nāzbuī)
were extracted many times in the next 20 days and put in the porcelain
dish with some amount of Argaja added to the final perfume. The ingre-
dients for the fourth perfume called Rūḥ Afzā were pressed into a certain
consistency to form globules (ghorṣ) and burnt in censers (mejmar) (see
Table 4). For powdery perfume such as Ūbtaneh, the ingredients were
pounded, then boiled with rose water in soft heat and finally dried in the
shade (see Table 5). For perfumes such as Abirmāyah, Kishtah, Fatīleh
and Bukhūr (see Tables 6–9), the respective ingredients for each were
pounded, mixed with refined sugar and boiled in rose water in gentle
fire. For Pārijāt/Bārijāt, the ingredients were distilled like the perfume
Chūwah as described in Akbarnama (see Table 10). The preparation of
the liquid perfume named Ghasūl required aromatics (see Table 11) and
the mixture had to be washed with two bottles of rose water.51
Then, Bayaz replicates from Akbarnama the process of making civet
perfume (zabād) sourced from animal or civet-cat. The collected civet-
extract was washed in cold water 30 times in a porcelain dish, and, re-
washed in hot water 2 to 3 times. Hot water helped in softening of the
ingredients and removed the impurities. The ingredients came out solidi-
fied and then it was washed with cold water and rinsed thrice with lemon
water. After this, the ingredients were filtered through a piece of cloth.
The filtered product was put into a Chinese porcelain bowl and washed
thrice with rose water. They were taken in a cup (pīyālah), kept inverted
and mixed at night with white jasmine flowers, oil of Arabian jasmine
and extracts of red roses. The mixture was filtered again in a white
cloth and spread out in the bright sunlight. Finally, when the moisture

51
Ibid., ff. 5b–7b.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  327

dried, a small amount of it when mixed with rose water started emanat-
ing the desired perfume.52
In the description of this recipe, the text states that different perfumes
and essences were to be used and prepared for different days. People
were expected to have the knowledge of which perfume was to be made
for which day. Aromatic herbs (joh) should be prepared for Saturday,
Saffron (za‘frān) for Sunday, Argaja should be prepared for Monday,
flower-elixir (gul-i aksīr) was meant for Tuesday, a variant of civet per-
fume or an aromatic mixture of musk, ambergris and camphor (ghālīyeh)
should be prepared for Wednesday, sandalwood should be prepared for
Thursday and ambergris and rose water (‘anbar va gulāb) was meant for
Friday.53
The text remains significant in introducing new perfumes other than
Akbarnama and elaborating recipes attributed to the names and crea-
tion of their patrons such as Mir Sayyid Muhammad Dahriyeh, Zakir
Mirza Khalil Quli, Shaikh Farid Bihari, Maqdum Ghazi, Nawab
Mausavi Khan and Gauhar Khanum.54 From Table 12, we find a list of
ingredients required for preparing a stylised perfume called Gandhrāj
(literally meaning ‘the king of all fragrances’). Each of the ingredients,
as listed in the table, was mixed with honey, oil/ secretion of civet-cat
(rōghan-i sannūr55) and cardamom oil, and roasted. Then the mixture
was put in a glass vessel (shīsheh) called kūbī or kūpī, the mouth of
which was enclosed with cotton gauze. Another vessel or cooking pot
(āwand) was taken whose bottom surface was perforated into a hole.
The orifice of the inverted glass kūbī was inserted in it and it was
placed on a tripod boiler (dīgdan). Another earthen bowl mixed with
porcelain (kāseh sufāl bā chīnī) was placed below for collection. After
this, a glass fire-pot (sabū-i ātish) was used to facilitate the process.
Cow-dung (sargīn) was added to it to slow down the fire in a manner
that the above-mentioned concoction would trickle down in the
earthen-porcelain bowl. The Gandhrāj perfume was, thus, produced

52
Ibid., ff. 7b–8a.
53
Ibid., f. 7a.
54
Ibid., ff. 8a–11a.
55
Sannūr or sinnawr al-zabād, in zoological terms, refers to the ‘civet cat’ of the family
Viverridae in the lands of Islam but often abbreviated just as zabād, in Asian and African
countries. See Bosworth, Donzel, Heinrichs, and Lecomte, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 651–653
(s.v. Sinnawr).

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

328  Amrita Chattopadhyay

and re-washed with the initial composition, thus collecting the final
perfume.56 The other process of preparing Gandhrāj perfume involved
extra ingredients such as frankincense (9 dām) and zedoary (9 dām).57
New perfumes were also prepared from animal fat (charbī) according
to the method narrated in this text. The fat of ram (charbī-i gūspand) and
fat of sheep’s tail (dumba) was boiled and filtered. It was cleaned or
washed 15 times so that the foul odour of the animal extracts went away.
Then it was washed with rose water 4 to 5 times. When it was clean, it
was boiled so that the water mixed well with the fat. A mixture was
formed along with water and removed from heating. It was left to cool
down, as a result of which the fat came up and the water settled at the
bottom. This fat was collected and the water was discarded. After this,
the fat had to be reset at the fireplace and heated. After heating for some
time, the fat was left to cool down. As soon as it cooled down, the per-
fume was collected. The aromatic residue formed the upper thick layer
that had to be mixed with water. After the collection, the perfume was
made into globules and used as a hand-wash. The entire method was
emulative of the recipe for preparing Iraqi soap (ṣābūn-i ‘iraqī) and
required skilful execution with extreme precision.58
In preparing another variant of royal Bārijāt/ Pārijāt (Bārijāt-i
Shāhāneh), nutmeg (javitrī) and pepper (filfil) were used as its newly
included aromatics. The distillation method followed for this referred to
an ingenious cooling mechanism according to which, five sweet-scented
grasses (khas) were dispersed on the glass bottle used for the process. A
distinctive assortment of aromatics such as fragrant root (sūgandh-i
bālā), gum-resin (sūgandh-i gūgal), sumac (sūgandh-i tatarī) and clove-
gillyflower (qaranful) were used for preparing a perfume called Anūpbān
(literally meaning ‘chief or guardian of lagoon’ or ‘one with unequalled
qualities’) (see Table 13).59
Through various perfumes, Bayaz standardises the practice of using
animal fat and grease. New aromatic herbs like medicinal spikenard
(sunbul-al ṭibb), nut grass (motah), grass-variant (akankī), creeper-
species (duwālak), plant moss (ūshnah) and roots like joh, dhūp (obtained

56
Anonymous, Bayaz-i Khwushbui, MS. Or. 828, ff. 9a–9b.
57
Ibid., ff. 9b–10a.
58
Ibid., ff. 10a–10b.
59
Ibid., ff. 8b–9a.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  329

from Kashmir), violet root (bīgh-i banafsha), zedoary or Chinese root

(zurumbād) and other fragrant roots (sūgandh-i bālā); gum-resin
(sūgandh-i gūgal), sumac (sūgandh-i tatarī) and clove-gillyflower
(qaranful) are repeatedly used as integral to the new perfumes. Rose-
extracts, orange-essences, sandalwood and aloe wood, however,
remained central to all the preparations, despite the variations and
modifications in the procedures.
The text reckons that many of its recipes were copied from the
Akbarnama, but it also makes new additions to the craft, taking it for-
ward in the artisanal practices and olfactory cultural traditions of the
period. Foremost, it recommends new ingredients and new methods for
the craft of perfume. It introduces perfumes with Indic names such as
Gandhrāj, Anūpbān as well as recreates scents from the Arab world,
thereby amplifying and enriching the olfactory repertoire of Mughal
material culture. Through borrowing and replication of old recipes and
addition of new ones, this manual is a case in point in indicating the
adaptability and richness of the craft. Incorporating new ingredients and
preparatory processes, it was expanding its scope and proficiency as
a technology. The technical know-how was being documented with
increasing precision using local ingredients and aromatics already
popular in the Indic traditions. And, at the same time, it tailored the per-
fumes in ways to situate them within the larger Islamicate landscape with
shared cultural sensibilities.

Perfumes Beyond the Smell

The textualisation of perfumes remains fused with the documentation of
the objects and receptacles associated with perfumes. High-value and
expensive materials like glass bottles, metal trays, boxes and porcelain
cups and plates made of precious materials used for collecting, storing,
sprinkling, distributing and gifting perfumes find discernible representa-
tion in textual sources. Specific Mughal perfumes like Itr-i Jahāngīrī and
Argaja were carried in gold or silver cups and salvers with covers60 or
poured in large crystal hookahs as part of gift-giving ceremonies or ritu-
als, or simply given as gifts themselves.61 In the imperial court of Lahore,

60
Khan, Shahjahan Nama, 62–63, 254; Khan, Maasir-i Alamgiri, 21–22.
61
Khan, Shahjahan Nama, 500.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

330  Amrita Chattopadhyay

on the occasion of a special banquet, perfumes were burnt in the various

receptacles and braziers in the enclosed hollow spaces of the silver and
gilt pedestals that formed the bases of the four silver-pillared columns of
the hall. The hall setting was full of diverse large perfume holders and
perfume braziers, made of silver and exhibiting wonderful workman-
ship. The sweetest perfumes composed of ambergris, eagle-wood and
musk, mingled with other odoriferous substances and were burnt in the
same large perfume braziers.62 Boxes made of precious stones like that of
lapis lazuli, full of scented musk, were also an item of rarity and high
value, used as a gift to the envoy of Balk.63
From both the Nuzhatu’l Qulub and Bayaz-i Khwushbui texts, we
identify a range of receptacles made of various material substrata. The
centrality of glass vessels and Chinese porcelain wares64 for perfume
preparation, distillation and mixing is notable. Indicating the shift from
decorative arts to utilitarian equipment, glass and porcelain were used
for their respective materiality, which rendered perfume production an
indispensable function. Further facilitating consumption and portability,
women in attendance used porcelain bottles to keep, carry and sprinkle
perfumes on the pilgrims around Qadam Sharif during the spring-festival
or basant.65 Perfume catered to the market as much to the royal house-
hold. The increase in perfume production, thereby encouraged glass
manufacturing at centres like Patna, Lucknow, and Kapadwanj in
Gujarat66 and trade in Chinese goods along the Silk Route as well as
Indian ocean maritime networks.67
Cooking pot (āwand) placed on tripods was important in the
process of distillation. Clay or brass or wooden plate or goblet (kāseh),
round tray or vessel for kneading (ṭabaq) were central to the preparatory

Manrique, Travels of Fray Sebastien Manrique (1629–1643), vol. 1, 215.

62

Manucci, Storia do Mogor, vol. II, 37.

63

64
Mahmud, Nuzhatu’l Qulub, MS. 1898, ff. 9, 22, 26, 28; Anonymous, Bayaz-i Khwushbui,
MS. Or. 828, ff. 6a, 7b, 9b.
65
Khan, Muraqqa-i Dehli, 42–43.
66
For a detailed discussion on Mughal glass, see Markel, ‘Indian and ‘Indianate’ Glass
Vessels in the Los Angeles,’ 82–92; Digby, ‘A Corpus of “Mughal” Glass’, 80–96; Tara
Desjardins, ‘Patna, Lucknow and the Curious Crest of John Deane’, 247–68.
67
Gerritsen, The City of Blue and White, 116–20.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  331

process, especially for collection and blending the ingredients.68 Finally,

a vessel called sabū is identifiable.69 It was a jar or pitcher-shaped vessel
made of glass for facilitating the collection of liquid perfumes through
funnels.70 Moreover, perfumes were stored and carried in animal horns
that travelled from Africa to the Mughal court. In one notable instance,
Aurangzeb was presented by the Ethiopian ambassador with civet per-
fume filled in the horn of an ox.71 Qarāba was another kind of receptacle
for perfumes, especially rose-essence. They were bottles made of glass
and resembled the shape of a jug (ṣurāhī).72 Fine Chinese silken threads
(rishta-i khaṭāī) used in the royal court as gifts were similarly perfumed
with rose water, musk and grey-ambergris (‘anbar-i ashhab).73 Wax-
candles (sham ‘-i mūm) were also made fragrant (ma‘itr) with rose water,
sandalwood, cardamom oil and other aromatic substances. During Shah
Jahan’s reign, an amber-scented chandelier was dispatched from the
Mughal court to Mecca and Medina as a sacred offering.74 Paper also
came to play a significant role in the task of soaking distilled aromatic
oils and sealing glass bottles in the process of perfume-making.75
Perfumes were smeared into the paper of the perfumed letter (inshā).
The letters were material-facilitators of the political and intellectual
milieu of the period but the perfumed letters had an extra role to play.
With their additional sensory properties, they fostered bonds of friend-
ship and intimacy through the process of exchange and consumption.
Besides papers, the period also witnessed the documentation of recipes
for preparing perfumed inks. These material practices recall an oft-
forgotten olfactory dimension to diplomatic and personal correspond-
ences.76 The value of Mughal perfumes was, therefore, a mutual process.
Perfume and its receptacle created meaning and value for each other.

68
Mahmud, Nuzhatu’l Qulub, MS. 1898, f. 9.
69
Anonymous, Bayaz-i Khwushbui, MS. Or. 828, ff. 5a–12a; Mahmud, Nuzhatu’l
Qulub, MS. 1898, ff. 22–26.
70
Steingass, ‘Persian-English Dictionary’, 650.
71
Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire 1656–1668, 135–37.
72
Dehlawi, Farhang-i Istilahat-i Peshwaran, vol. 4 (s.v. pesha phuleri Gandhi).
73
Abul Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. 1, 423–24.
74
Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, 200
75
Mahmud, Nuzhatu’l Qulub, MS. 1898, f. 37.
76
Flatt, ‘Practicing Friendship’, 67.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

332  Amrita Chattopadhyay

Perfumes as a Site of Technical Innovations and

Cultural Borrowings: A Critical Analysis
Perfumes in early modern India became a site of experimentation, bor-
rowings and assimilation. A ‘creative synthesis’77 of twin sources of
knowledge—the already existing Indic tradition and that of the Perso-
Islamicate traditions that were introduced in India with the advent of
Islam—was recognisable in early modern perfumes. The Mughal period
particularly saw a creative escalation of this process marked by a degree
of advancement and maturing of the episteme and the overall mecha-
nisms associated with perfume production. The imperial patronage of
perfume as a craft bolstered the technological and artistic maturation in
this period, identifiable in three stages of the craft production.
The first step consisted of gathering and accumulation of ingredients
from diverse natural sources (animal and plant sources), the second step
required processing them either by washing, heating, cooling, filtering,
grinding and distilling. The process of distillation required for making
liquid perfume was primarily steam distillation. It involved manual dex-
terity and technical skills of distillation. No wonder that during this
period, we come across a separate professional group specialising in dis-
tillation known as Kalal78 or distillers. The third and final step was the
most delicate one. It consisted of mixing and blending the processed
products in the right proportions for each perfume. The process of blend-
ing was like the composition of music. A very delicate art, it required a
sound knowledge and artistic sensibility of mixing the perfume-notes.
The ingredients, recipes, proportions and methods of mixing, timing and
the temperatures for heating and cooling varied with each perfume. This
entailed impeccable proficiency in the craft to bring the desired finesse
and uniqueness to each perfume. The technology of perfume-making
also varied according to its purpose and applicability. Different body
parts needed different perfumes and each was prepared with different
ingredients and separate recipes. The method for perfuming a bedroom
varied from that of an assembly hall; the recipe for preparing aromatic
breath was different from the recipe for perfuming hair. With such
specificities and richness to its merit, it is safe to argue that it was a

77
Arnold, New Cambridge History of India, vol. III, part V, 4.
78
Skinner, Kitab-i Tashrihu’l Aqwam, MS. 34, ff. 134–37.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  333

well-developed craft in Mughal India— a unique combination of science

and art. The excellence of the craft also lay in its adaptability and the
innovations that occurred through its multi-staged material procedures.
The innovations observed in the first stage of perfume production
during this period involved the diversification and increase in the variety
of aromatic ingredients, and the textualisation of recipes. This further
contributed to the refinement of the overall mechanism of its production.
New ingredients like rose, civet, oil or fat of animals like of buffalo and
ram were introduced. This was particularly true for roses that were
unknown to Sanskrit literary traditions before the mid-fifteenth century.79
Proliferation of fragrant Mughal gardens, encouragement in the planting
of scented floral trees and careful listing of fragrant flowers can be noted
in the Mughal memoirs and historical accounts.80 Rose cultivation and
rose gardens in Lahore, Ahmedabad, Pinjaur, Kashmir and Fatehpur
Sikri became integral to the aesthetic regimes of the Mughal Empire. At
the same time, this horticultural shift was a functional response to the
increasing demand for perfumes with rose water as one of their indispen-
sable ingredients. Ensuring careful supervision of the agricultural pro-
duction of perfume ingredients was another significant development in
this stage of perfume production.
The most noteworthy innovation, however, occurred in the second
stage of perfume production in the realm of distillation technology.81
It has been speculated that the mechanism of steam distillation for liquor
production82 was possibly extended and applied to the production of

79
For a detailed discussion on the art of distillation of rose, its origin and spread across
countries, See, Gode, Studies in Indian Cultural History, vol. 1, 28.
80
Babur, Baburnama, vol. II, 513–15; Abul Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, vol. 1, 87; Jahangir,
Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, 5–7; Khan, Mirat-i Ahmadi, Supplement, 20; Bhandari, Khulasatu-t
Tawarikh, 35.
81
Distillation technology in India has been subject of detailed research, sustained debate
and series of works. See, Forbes, A Short History of the Art of Distillation; Needham,
Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5, part 4, 103–121; Allchin, ‘India: The Ancient
Home of Distillation?’ 55–63; Habib, ‘Technology and Economy of Mughal India’, 25;
Habib, ‘Joseph Needham and the History of Indian Technology’, 266.
82
Irfan Habib argues that early distillation stills in South Asia, ‘probably had no sequel’.
Distillation of alcohol does, however, appear to have taken on in South Asia during the
period of the Delhi Sultanate and he provides significant information to show the practice
of distillation of sweet-scented drink (‘arq) from sugar-cane juice, drop by drop distillation
of wine and installation of boilers at home in fourteenth-century Delhi. Habib, ‘Technology

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

334  Amrita Chattopadhyay

perfumes and essences. Joseph Needham has ascertained that Indian

distillation practice adhered to the ancient Gandharan stills, but Irfan
Habib has argued and demonstrated that a new distillation still was
introduced in India, that of the Italian-Arab which rapidly travelled to the
subcontinent from Italy through the Islamic world.83 It reached India by
the thirteenth century and by the Mughal period, it found considerable
acceptance in the chemical techniques and practices of the Indian
subcontinent, especially for alcohol distillation. Distinctive about this
distillation still was the addition of a new component called ‘Moor’s
Head’.84 It had a water container set at the top of the main still. The still
was a spoon-shaped alembic with a concave roof meant for annular rim
collection of the distilled liquid. It was connected with a tube to the
receiver. The condenser and receiver in this arrangement were separate
units unlike the Gandharan stills, and it was for the first time such
modifications were put into effect.85
The article, thereby, postulates that new adjustments were gradually
happening for perfume distillation as well. As we notice in the case of

and Economy of Mughal India’, 25–26; Habib, ‘Joseph Needham and the History of Indian
Technology’, 269.
83
Trade, politics and diplomacy fostered a wide circulation of goods, ideas and people from
the late fifteenth century between India, the wider world of Islam and European countries.
This led to several scientific, medical and technological exchanges and simultaneously
shaped the Mughal empire’s perfumery technology. See Habib, ‘Technology and Economy
of Mughal India’; Arnold, New Cambridge History of India, vol. III, part V, 5.
84
Moor’s head was a rimless water-condenser or a still-top cooling bath embracing the
upper part of the distillation still. It originated during the Renaissance period in Europe but
although the actual root of the term remains vague, the influence of Islam on it has been
fairly recognised. The device has been seen in usage in some of the ‘Moorish lands’ such as
Algeria and Morocco. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5, part 4, 129–31;
Habib, ‘Joseph Needham and the History of Indian Technology’, 267.
85
Habib agrees with Joseph Needham’s classification of the three forms of stills: Mongol
stills, Chinese stills and Hellenistic stills. Based on the description provided in the Ain-i
Akbari, Habib further asserts that the second one which Needham describes as Chinese can
be clearly identified as the Gandharan stills, where the condenser was the receiver, itself
placed in cold water. And unlike Needham’s argument which says that it was the Gandharan
stills which was recognised as more practical than the Mongol and Hellenistic stills between
the seventh and twelfth centuries and ‘adopted accordingly’, Habib proposes that it was the
third type, the Hellenistic type with a Moore’s head (with water at the top) was the medieval
Italian-Arabian still or the Mediterranean still and this became much more efficient and
prevalent for liquor distillation even in Medieval India during the medieval period. See
Habib, ‘Joseph Needham and the History of Indian Technology’, 266–67.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  335

distilling for Gandhrāj perfume, a fire-pitcher (sabū-i ātish) was indeed

used to improve cooling in the still so as to increase the collection of the
liquid at a low level of heat and to increase the precision of collection. To
be emphasised, however, is the fact that from the above-studied per-
fumes’ preparatory processes described in these craft-based texts and
manuals, distillation continued to follow its own unique character and
method at least till during the seventeenth century. The distillation stills
were simple but were being modified according to the suitability and
nuances of the growing corpus of perfume and perfume recipes.86 It
simultaneously adhered to the traditional application of hand-fan,
scented grass (khas) and cow-dung for cooling mechanisms. It can thus,
be asserted that the technology displayed adaptability in innovating and
embracing new methods for improving its procedure. This particular
characteristic presumably contributed to the continuing practice of steam
distillation for perfume in the later centuries and subsequent flourish of
the traditional and indigenous perfume industry (based on dīg and
bhapka method) thriving till date in the city of Qannauj in Northern
India.87
The third or the final stage of perfume-making saw a proliferation of
a greater variety starting from perfume in solid form like Kishtah,
Bukhūr; in the form of paste like Ūbtaneh; incense such as Gul Kāmah
and liquid forms such as Ghasūl (liquid soap); and distilled liquid per-
fumes (‘itr) like Chūwah, Bārjāt, Gandhrāj and ‘Itr-i Jahāngīrī. Sesame
oil became a popular base-oil for liquid perfumes during this period.

86
Perfume’s distillation stills eventually incorporated the water-condenser on top as we
see in an 1873 Urdu language manual from Madras. For mention of this, see Lanzillo and
Kumar, ‘The Labour of Smell’.
87
The steam distillation of the essence of rose appears to have been introduced from Iran
via Basra, and from Arabia into India, first to Qannauj on the Ganges and then to Ghazipur,
where the industry is still in existence. Irfan Habib agrees with P. K. Gode in crediting the
Arabs (or rather Persians) of early Islam with the discovery of the process of extracting
rose water through distillation. They transmitted this practice to India, presumably with the
foundation of the Sultanate and the thirteenth-century immigrations that followed. In the early
seventeenth century, the discovery and popularisation of ‘Itr-i Jahāngīrī (essence obtained
from the distilled rose water) further heightened Mughal’s cultural association with rose.
Lanzillo and Kumar in their recent piece has shown that perfume-making through steam
distillation of various fragrant substances, especially of rose which continues till date in
Qannauj. See Gode, Studies In Indian Cultural History, vol. 1, 31; Habib, ‘Technology and
Economy of Mughal India’, 25; Lanzillo and Kumar, ‘The Labour of Smell’.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

336  Amrita Chattopadhyay

There was also the introduction of a more nuanced and wider range of
perfume recipes as we have seen from the previous sections. Emphasis
was put on precision in maintaining timing, temperature and the condi-
tions for blending and mixing of the aromatics. Customisation of per-
fumes according to the user, his or her taste or personality, socio-political
status—whether in the case of the Mughal emperor,88 or the nobility89 or
the Mughal mirzas90—influenced the consumption patterns, be they
religious, ceremonial or personal. Characteristic of certain class and
social groups, the practice of tailoring perfumes became a noticeable
trait of the craft executed in this stage of production.
Through contact with the Islamic world, new scientific knowledge and
new aromatic ingredients were transmitted, and technological and chemical
changes occurred consequently. This simultaneously popularised the use
of liquid perfume (‘itr) that could be made from any natural fragrant
substances, thereby. These new technological innovations and borrowings
through the process of knowledge building and cultural assimilation led to
the creation of a syncretic ‘Indo-Islamicate’ perfumery culture. This came
to dot and define the material landscape of Mughal India.

Perfumes, Factories and Labour

Mughal perfumes as a site of transmission, exchange and assimilation
of hybrid knowledge systems also bookend the aspect of labour that
adds value to the material and explains the economy of production. The

88
It was a common practice since Akbar’s time and his successors to use perfumes for
personal use, courtly rituals such as weighing ceremonies as well as for religious purposes.
The household and the court-hall remained continually scented from the burning of ‘anbar
(ambergris), agar (aloewood) and other incenses’. See Abul Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, vol.1, 74;
Jahangir, Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, 332.
89
Mughal nobles like Said Khan Chaghata and Zain Khan Koka were ardent perfume
consumers. See Bhakkari, Zakhiratu’l Khawanin, Part 1, 88–89, 139, 140.
90
In the seventeenth century, mirzas were prescribed to keep the winter-house (khāna-i
zamistān) perfumed (ma‘itr) with the scent of fitna, flowers (gul) and Argaja. He would also
put (nihāde) aloe wood (‘udi) in the fire (dar ātīsh) and for the summer season, scent of rose
(gulāb) and Jahāngīrī Argaja which was perfect first-class perfume (kāmal ‘aīār fard aūwal)
was prescribed. See, Anonymous, Mirzanama, MS. Add. 16,819, f. 93b; Mirzas have been
discussed as ‘lesser gentry’ sustaining on limited salaries with class anxieties. As Riya Gupta
has shown in her work, mirzas were ‘petty officials’, a sub-group of the Mughal middle
class with a normative and aspirational ‘cultured behaviour’. See O’ Hanlon, ‘Manliness
and Imperial Service’, 47–93; Gupta, ‘Revisiting the Mirzanama’, 137–60.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  337

literary sources from this period do not speak about labour, and almost
no evidence concerning the wages of professionals can be found. But
what can be deduced is the division of labour into the multi-stage
processes and the range of different professionals and their social and
caste identities involved in the whole procedure. As noted above,
perfume production took place in stages, moving from gathering raw
materials, to the extraction of oils, to distillation and to the ultimate stage
of perfume-making. This involved identifiable caste groups such as
Kalals or distillers,91 Teli or oil-pressers92 and finally Gandhi or perfume-
makers93 in the subcontinent. The continuing presence of these caste
groups can be understood from the nineteenth-century illustrated Persian
manuscript Kitab-i Tashrihu’l Aqwam (‘A Book on the Description of
the Communities’), commissioned by the Anglo-Indian colonel James
Skinner. According to the text, the community of the perfume-makers or
Gandhi traced their lineage back to ancient epic and Puranic traditions.
They initially belonged to the Vaishya caste of which one man left his
religion and custom and married the widow of a sailor. After being
expelled from his community, he adopted the skill of plucking flowers
and of distillation. He came to be known in Sanskrit as Gandhi. He had
the pleasure of being bestowed with many materials, endowed with a
specified salary and thereby received patronage. The term referred to the
one who was a druggist producing fragrant oil and was simultaneously
selling glass bottles (kūzah-i shīsheh) of liquid perfumes in the markets
and streets. He dealt with a variety of aromatics such as 10 to 20 bottles
of rose water (‘arq-i gulāb) or kewda perfume, jasmine oil (rōghan-i
chamīlī) in leather bottles (kūppī) and fragrant tooth-paste (dant manjan)
which were packaged and put in a chest (ṣanduq) for sale. In cities like
Jaipur and Ajmer, the profession was dominated by the Hindus like
Khandelwals who took the surname of Gandhi and a few Muslims
adopted the profession in the city of Shahjahanabad. They were known
as Muslim Gandhi and had distinct manners and customs. The wage such
producers made from spending time on the craft and from the sales was
the reason for having a good living and being famous. His dharma was

91
Skinner, Kitab-i Tashrihu’l Aqwam, MS. 34, ff. 134–137.
92
Ibid., ff. 540–542.
93
Ibid., ff. 611–613.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

338  Amrita Chattopadhyay

to respect and worship the flowers such as rose and jasmine, and offer
service to the Brahmins.94 The textual production of perfumers and their
social identities in this later-century manuscript hints at the formation of
an ‘affective knowledge’95 around material objects in the subcontinent
derived within the colonial society through the process of acculturation.
The Mughal khushbūkhānah, the location where all the aromatic
compounds from different sources were assimilated and the process of
blending was executed, had careful supervision. Syed Ali Nadeem
Rezavi, in his work, attests to the presence of a khushbūkhānah located
to the south-west of the Diwan-i Am in the city of Fatehpur.96 Shah
Mansur of Shiraz, a Mughal noble and a former accountant,97 was in
charge of the department.98 In 1582, Akbar as part of his measures under-
taken for regulating the market of essential commodities, remitted taxes
on perfumes99 and simultaneously appointed one of his competent offic-
ers, the admiral Qasim Khan, in charge of the aromatics.100 Qasim Khan
had already proven his mettle in the administration as an able builder
entrusted with the construction of mines, bridges, rent-houses as well as
Agra Fort.101 During the fourth year of Aurangzeb’s reign, the imperial
rose-water house or factory (gulābkhānah) was supplied on a daily basis
with red roses weighing 40 Alamgīrī maund from a delightful garden at
Pinjaur. The red roses of this garden were reputed for their abundance
(farāwānī), fineness or delicacy (laṭāfat) and were also used for
veneration.102
Moreover, the women, mostly wives of the nobles who also spent
hours studying the method of perfume preparation, practiced the art of
perfume-making, in the role of blenders.103 And they assigned creative
and personalised value to the perfumes. The involvement of women
in this delicate and coveted craft remains noteworthy during this period.

94
Skinner, Kitab-i Tashrihu'l Aqwam, MS. 34, ff. 201–202.
95
Bayly, Empire and Information, 7.
96
Rezavi, ‘Exploring the Mughal Gardens at Fatehpur Sikri’, 899.
97
Abul Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. 3, 287, 303.
98
Abul Fazl, Ain-i Akbari, vol 1, 74.
99
Abul Fazl, Mukatabat-i Allami Daftar I, 13–15.
100
Abul Fazl, Akbarnama, vol. 3, 585.
101
Ibid., 25, 123, 248, 277, 374, 454, 523, 559.
102
Bhandari, Khulasatu-t Tawarikh, 35.
103
Palsaert, Jahangir’s India, 64.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  339

The discovery of ‘Itr-i Jahāngīrī, the most celebrated Mughal perfume,

has been attributed to a royal woman of the Mughal household. Mughal
empress Nur Jahan’s (1577–1645 ad) mother Ismat Begum (1539–1613
ad) has been credited with the innovation and naming of the perfumed
oil. Jahangir rewarded her with a pearl necklace for the invention.104 Not
only in the role of producers, elite women were also the chief consumers
of Mughal perfumes like that of Chūwah105 and Itr-i Jahāngīrī.106 They
used the liquid perfume profusely on their clothes and bodies as a means
of beautification, as well as a marker of their social status.
Finally, a significant dimension of early modern Indian perfume lay
at the intersection of literary and material culture of the period. Needless
to say, there was a great deal of literary production in the form of written
manuscripts, books and documents devoted to perfume-making and
consumptive habits and techniques. This was further buttressed by state
patronage, prevailing episteme and the cultural environment of the period.
Within this larger atmosphere of sustained power relations and literary
treatment, the authorial intention behind the production, circulation and
consumption of texts on perfumes was driven not just by mere love for
aesthetic delight or olfactory pursuits but also a political economy
supporting the craft, the materiality and informed by the labour behind it.
The Mughal Empire, what Farhat Hasan has recently called a ‘Paper
Empire’,107 was aligned with this advancement. Perfume culture in this
milieu peaked in its material representation through literary productions,
manuscript circulation and consumption. The written documentation for
perfumes during this period in India from the above-discussed corpus of
texts simultaneously located the craft within the network of a ‘patrimonial
knowledge’108 system prevalent in the empire that was deep, detailed and
mostly linked with the court culture.

104
Jahangir, Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, 271.
105
Jahanara has known for using Chūwah on her clothes. See Mundy, Travels of Peter
Mundy in Europe and Asia 1608–1667, vol. II, 161–162.
106
Manucci noted that Nur Jahan ‘quickly rubbed some on her clothes and went off to
embrace the King’. See Manucci, Storio do Mogor, vol. 1, 163.
107
Hasan, Paper, Performance and the State.
108
Bayly, Empire and Information, 8, 17; Also See Hasan, Paper, Performance and the
State, 10.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

340  Amrita Chattopadhyay

Written Archive on Perfumes from the

Medieval Deccan and Beyond the Mughals
While the Mughal Empire, a polity primarily based in the northern part
of India, was patronising these textual productions on perfumes, the
southern or the Deccan polity underwent a parallel flourish of court
culture and literary developments. Scholar Emma Flatt has studied a
fascinating sixteenth-century illustrated manuscript on astronomical
sciences called Nujum al Ulum from the Bijapur Sultanate commissioned
by the Bijapur Sultan Ali Adil Shah (1557–1579 ad). The text discusses
the use of perfumes and scents as a material means for the invocation of
planets, angels and spirits or jinns.109 Keladi Basavaraja,110 of the
seventeenth-century Keladi dynasty (1499–1763 ad), also included an
elaborate treatment of this scientific subject in his voluminous treatise
written in Sanskrit, known as the Siva Tattva Ratnakara, which is a
veritable source of information relating to the knowledge of perfumery
and chemistry.111
Seventeenth-century Bijapur, the capital city of one of the Deccan
Sultanates namely Adil Shahi dynasty (1490–1686 ad), produced a
Persian treatise called Itr-i Nauras Shahi (‘The Fragrances of the King of
Nine Essences’). Studied by Ali Akbar Husain,112 it remains a detailed
and comprehensive account of perfumery written for Sultan Ibrahim
Adil Shah II (who reigned from 1580–1670 ad) by Nizamuddin Mahmud,
also known as Tarsan bin Maula Habibullah Alsharifi. Divided into 9
sub-treatises (maqālah) and 18 sections (faṣls), the key perfumery
ingredients mentioned here are red rose, ambergris, musk, sandalwood,
camphor, civet, saffron, violet root, frankincense, clove, cardamom,
chrysanthemum and jasmine oil.113 Beeswax was also used for composing

109
Flatt, ‘The Authorship and Significance of the Nujum al Ulum’, 223–44; Flatt, ‘Spices,
Smells and Spells’, 1–20.
110
The scholarly king of Keladi, who ruled from 1694 to 1714 ad. Initially, the Nayaks
of Keladi was an important vasal kingdom of the Vijayanagar Empire but later gained
independence and ruled south-western India comprising present-day Karnataka and parts
of Mysore.
111
Krishnamurthy, ‘Perfumery in Ancient India’, 72.
112
Husain, ‘Perfuming the Heart’, 190; Husain, Scent in the Islamic Garden.
113
Mahmud, Itr-i Naurus Shahi, MS. I.O. ISL. 3650, ff. 1–42.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  341

aromatic pastes.114 Demonstrating a close resemblance to the ingredients

used in Mughal perfume factories, the text also upholds the process of
steam distillation for perfume made from lignum aloes and floral ingre-
dients. It discusses the preparation of ghālīyeh from ambergris, sandal-
wood, musk and camphor115, elaborates recipes for making aromatic
mouth fresheners (miswāk116 and mukhbās117) and perfuming indoor
spaces such a royal sleeping chambers (khwābgāh).118 Pots and other
containers like porcelain wares (kāseh-i chīnī, żurf-i chīnī),119 vessels
(katūreh)120 and glass bottles (shīsheh)121 remain integral to the process
of mixing, kneading, washing and boiling the aromatic ingredients. The
shared nature of the aromatic ingredients in use, the knowledge and
mechanism of perfume-making and finally, the common use of recepta-
cles in these treatises indicate the close affinity and cultural borrowing
between the Islamicate polities and neighbouring court-cultures within
the subcontinent in this period. Adding to the process of what Philip B.
Wagoner’s refers to as ‘Islamcization’,122 perfumes served as a locale of
acculturation and assimilation.

Conclusion
The overall literary culture that flourished in early modern India encour-
aged the writing of chronicles and manuscripts that inscribed perfumes
as a craft in its own right. Through patronage and documentation, the
imperial court created an intellectual milieu that construed perfume as a
royal artefact and the material practices integral to it became central to
the Mughal cultural identity. The culture was, however, not a monolithic
identity of a singular tradition or socio-religious community. It was
integrative and assimilative of the Indic practices, Indic names of
perfumes and already popular ingredients such as sandalwood, camphor

114
Ibid., f. 41.
115
Ibid., f. 28.
116
Ibid., f. 37.
117
Ibid., ff. 38–39.
118
Ibid., f. 39
119
Ibid., ff. 14, 38.
120
Ibid., f. 38
121
Ibid., ff. 38–42.
122
Wagoner, ‘Sultan Among Hindu Kings’, 853.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

342  Amrita Chattopadhyay

and aloes. While the continuities are significant in the making of

Indo-Islamicate perfume, the distinct changes were best exhibited in the
naming and nomenclature of perfumes whereby many Sanskritic termi-
nologies gave way to Persianate ones. Changes in perfume culture were
also evident in the incorporation of new ingredients, popularisation
and increase in production of liquid perfumes, overall diversification in
forms and certain adjustments in the distillation stills under the aegis of
the Islamicate empires. Labour became divided for maximising produc-
tion in less time and for ensuring precision at every stage. Drawing on
material and human resources, perfume production was also a mecha-
nism to facilitate the circulation of aromatics and materials, thereby, cre-
ating a connectedness of polities and material worlds. It also bolstered
glass manufacturing and trade in Chinese porcelain across the subconti-
nent, for its own material prerogatives. The craft charted a material world
that embraced both the chemical process and technical innovations
pivoting around distillation, pounding and blending. Water, oil and aro-
matics, thereby, created a chemical polity that catered to a thriving liter-
ary milieu, an aesthetic regime and sensorial pursuits, accentuating the
cultural identity and material practices of the Indo-Islamicate Empire
in early modern India.

Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to my supervisor Prof Syed Najaf Haider for his
constant guidance, unfailing support and several valuable inputs on this
research. Grateful thanks also go to Prof Chander Shekhar for gener-
ously imparting his knowledge, helping me with translation and his per-
sistent encouragement. Thanks are due to the anonymous reviewers for
their nuanced reading and detailed feedback and Prof Eva Orthmann’s
insightful comments on the article-draft which have further helped in its
improvement. I must thank our Special Issue editor, Dr Anne E. Lester,
for all the critical engagements and her rigour and patience in seeing this
through its final form. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the generosity of
my friends and colleagues, especially Anurag, Shounak and Mrinalini,
for helping me access invaluable sources even during the Covid years
and Deepashree, Sourav, Tathagata and Riya for their support and
engagement at various stages of this work.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  343

Notes on Transliteration
I have followed the IJMES (International Journal of Middle East
Studies)’s style sheet for transliteration but for Indo-Persian words,
I have transliterated in a manner that approximates the South Asian
pronunciation.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the
research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship
and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD
Amrita Chattopadhyay https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9147-0528

Appendix
Table 1. Ingredients for Santūk.
Ingredients Quantity
Civet (zabād) 10 tolah
Jasmine oil 2 masha
Aromatic herb (joh) 1 tola
Rose(gulāb) 2 glass bottles
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, f. 5b.

Table 2. Ingredients for Argaja.

Ingredients Quantity
Sandalwood (ṣandal) 3 pao
Lignum aloes (‘ud) and mīd 2 tola
Herb (joh) 3 tola
Camphor (kāfūr) Half masha
(Appendix 2 continued)

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

344  Amrita Chattopadhyay

(Appendix 2 continued)
Ingredients Quantity
Aromatic flowering plant (kahīlah)/ myrobalan (halīleh) 1 tola
Rose (gulāb) 11 glass bottles
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, f. 5b.

Table 3. Ingredients for Gul Kāmah.

Ingredients Quantity
Ambergris (‘anbar-i asab) 1 tola
Ambergris (‘anbar-i luwan) 1/2 tola
Musk (mushk) 2 guzīn
Lignum aloes (agar) 4 guzīnda
Elixir (āksīr) 8 guzīnda
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, f. 5b.

Table 4. Ingredients for Rūḥ Afzā.

Ingredients Quantities
Lignum aloes 5 Akbarī ser
Sandalwood 1 Akbarī ser
Ambergris (‘anbar-i lādan) 1 Akbarī ser
Frankincense (lobān) 30 tola
Fragrant herb (dhūp) 30 tola
Violet root (bīgh-i banafsha) 20 tola
Plant moss (ūshnah) 10 tola
Elixir 30 tola tar
Roses 4 bottles
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, f. 6a.

Table 5. Ingredients for Ūbtaneh.

Ingredients Quantity
Lignum aloes 1 ½ Akbarī ser 5 dām
Neroli ditto
Ambergris (‘anbar-i lādan) 3 ser pao dām
Sandalwood 1 ser10 dām
Medicinal spikenard (sunbul-al ṭib) 1 ser 5 dām
Plant moss 1 ser 5 dām
Orange-peel (pūst-i nāranj) 1 ½ ser
Musk 38.5 tola
(Appendix 5 continued)

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  345

(Appendix 5 continued)
Ingredients Quantity
Apples 36 tola
Pachah leaves 1 ser 4 tola
Nut grass or Cyperus rotundus (motah) 11 tola
Violet root (bīgh-i banafsha) 5 dām
Grass (akankī) 1 ½ tola
Zedoary or Chinese root (zurumbād) ditto
Fragrant herb (dhūp) 1 tola
Frankincense 1 tola 2 masha
Rose water 100 bottles
Extracts of orange-flower (‘arq-i bahār) 5 bottles
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, ff. 6a–6b.

Table 6. Ingredients for ‘Abirmāyah.

Ingredients Quantity
Lignum aloes 4 dām
Sandalwood 2 dām
Violet root (bīgh-i banafsha) 1 dām
Medicinal spikenard (sunbul-al ṭib) 30 dām
Musk 4 tola
Ambergris (‘anbar-i lādan) 20 dām
Neroli 70 dām
Fragrant creeper-species (duwālak) 3 dām
Rose water 10 bottles
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, f. 6b.

Table 7. Ingredients for Kishtah.

Ingredients Quantity
Lignum aloes 42 tola
Sandalwood 6 tola
Ambergris (‘anbar-i lādan) 6 tola
Frankincense 6 tola
Abirmāyah 4 tola
Fragrant herb (dhūp) 4 tola
Violet root (bīgh-i banafsha) 2 tola
Musk 2 tola
Elixir 1 tola
Rose water 2 bottles
Sugar 50 tola
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, ff. 6b–7a.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

346  Amrita Chattopadhyay

Table 8. Ingredients for Bukhūr.

Ingredients Quantity
Lignum aloes 1 Akbarī ser
Sandalwood 1 Akbarī ser
Ambergris (‘anbar-i lādan) 1 pao unit
Musk 2 tola
Elixir 5 tola
Sugar 2 Akbarī ser
Rose water 1 bottle
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, f. 7a.

Table 9. Ingredients for Fatīleh.

Ingredients Quantity
Lignum aloes 5 Akbarī ser
Sandalwood 75 tola
Elixir 25 tola
Ladanum 25 tola
Frankincense 25 tola
Sugar 3 tola
Rose water 2 bottles
Violet root 20 tola
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, f. 7a.

Table 10. Ingredients for Bārichāt or Pārichāt.

Ingredients Quantity
Lignum aloes 1 Akbarī ser
Ambergris (‘anbar-i lādan) 5 tola
Musk 2 tola
Sandalwood 2 tola
Frankincense 1 tola
Camphor ½ tola
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, ff. 7a–7b.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  347

Table 11. Ingredients for Ghasūl.123

Ingredients Quantity
Sandalwood 123
35 tola
Katūl (meaning unidentified) 17 tola
Musk 1 tola
Aromatic herb (joh) 1 tola
Civet-grease (mīd) 2 masha
Camphor 2 masha
Rose water 2 bottles
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, f. 7b.

Table 12. Ingredients for Gandhrāj.

Ingredients Quantity
Lignum aloes 1 Akbarī ser
Ambergris (‘anbar-i ashhab) 2 tola
Musk 2 tola
Camphor 2 tola
Sandalwood 1 unit
Good crystallised sugar 2 tola
Almonds 2 tola
Root of a tree (sarī) 4 ser
Elixir 9 dām
Pure honey 40 dām
Fat of civet-cat (rōghan-i sannūr) 40 dām
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, ff. 9a–10a.

Table 13. Ingredients for Anūp Bān.

Ingredients Quantity
Lignum aloes 1 Akbarī ser
Sandalwood 3 dām
Calembic (kalanbac) 3 dām
Ambergris (‘anbar-i lādan) 1 tola
Storax or cardāmon oil 1 tola
Civet-grease 1 tola
Saffron (za‘frān) 1 tola
Almond 3 dām
Marine snails (nakha) 1 tola
(Appendix 13 continued)

123
The author of the manuscript probably makes an error by writing Ghasul instead of
sandalwood. Akbarnama indicates sandalwood with the same amount.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

348  Amrita Chattopadhyay

(Appendix 13 continued)

Ingredients Quantity
Clove (lavang) 1 tola
Zedoary 1 tola
Small cardāmom (alāchī) 1 tola
Fragrant root (sūgandh-i bālā) 1 tola
Fragrant gum-resin (sūgandh-i gūgal) 1 tola
Fragrant sumac (sūgandh-i tatarī) 1 tola
Frankincense 1 tola
Myrobalan (halīleh) 1 tola
Plant-mass 1 tola
Musk 30 māsha
Camphor 4 māsha
Source: Bayaz-i Khwushbui, f. 9a.

References
Ahmed, Aziz. ‘The British Museum Mirzanama and the Seventeenth Century Mirza in
India’. Iran 13 (1975): 104–106.
Allchin, F. R. ‘India: The Ancient Home of Distillation?’ Man: New Series 14, no. 1 (1979):
55–63.
Al-Rahman, Abd. ‘Science and Technology in India During the Mughal Period: A Brief
Survey of Developments’. In Science and Technology in Islam: Technology and Applied
Science, edited by A.Y. Al-Hasan, vol. 4, part I, 593–94. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001.
Anonymous. The N’imatnama Manuscript of the Sultans of Mandu: The Sultan’s Book of
Delight. Translated by Norah Titley. London & New York: Routledge, 2005.
Anonymous. Bayaz-i Khwushbui. British Library, London, MS. Or. 828.
Anonymous. Mirzanama. British Museum (Now British Library), London, Persian MS.
Add. 16,819: ff. 89b–95b.
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Arnold, David. The New Cambridge History of India: Science, Technology and Medicine
in Colonial India, vol. 3. part V. London: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Babur. Baburnama (The Memoirs of Babur), 2 vols. Translated by Annette Susannah
Beveridge. London: Great Russell Street, 1922.
Bayly, Christopher Alan. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the
Age of British Expansion, 1770–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Bayly, C. A. 1999. Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social
Communication in India, 1780–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bernier, Francis. Travels in the Mogul Empire 1656–1668. Translated by Irving Broke,
annotated by Archibald Constable. 2nd edition revised by Vincent A. Smith. London:
Oxford University Press, 1916.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  349

Bhakkari, Shaikh Farid. Zakhiratu’l Khawanin: A Biographical Dictionary of Mughal

Noblemen, Part I. Translated by Ziyaud-Din A. Desai. Delhi: Idarah-I Adabiyat-I
Delli, 2009.
Bhandari, Sujan Rai. Khulasatu’t Tawarikh. Edited by Zafar Hasan. Delhi: J. & Sons Press,
1918.
Bosworth, C.E., E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs, and Lecomte. The Encyclopaedia of
Islam: New Edition, vol. IX. Leiden: Brill, 1997.
Chattopadhyay, Amrita. ‘Perfumes in Early Modern India: Ephemeral Materiality and
Aromatic Mobility’. In Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean
World: Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600–2000, edited by Burton Cleetus
and Anne Gerritsen, 87–109. UK: Bloomsbury, 2003.
Chattopadhyay, Amrita. ‘A Study of Aromatic Woods in Seventeenth Century India:
Circulation of Aloewood and Sandalwood Through Facilitating Port Cities and Trade
Networks’. Crossroads 20, nos. 1–2 (2022): 76–117.
Chattopadhyay, Amrita. ‘Perfumes in 16th–18th Century India: “A Religious-Cultural”
Artefact and the Formation of a Scent Landscape’. In Religion, Landscape and
Material Culture in Pre-modern South Asia, edited by Tilottama Mukherjee and
Nupur Dasgupta, 53–77. London and New York: Routledge, 2023.
Dehlawi, Zafar ur Rahman. Farhang-i-Istilahat-i-Peshwaran: A Glossary of Technical
Terms Used in Indian Arts and Crafts (8 vols). Delhi: Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hindi),
1939–1944.
Deshpande, Vijaya Jayant. ‘History of Chemistry and Alchemy in India from Pre-historic to
Pre-modern times’. In History of Indian Science, Technology and Culture (1000–1800
ad.), edited by A. Rahman. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Desjardins, Tara. ‘Patna, Lucknow and the Curious Crest of John Deane’. Journal of
Glass Studies 63 (2021): 247–68.
Digby, Simon. ‘A Corpus of “Mughal” Glass’. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London 36, no. 1 (1973): 80–96.
Fazl, Abul. Akbarnama (3 vols). Translated by H. Beveridge. Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1907.
Fazl, Abul. Ain-i Akbari (2 vols). Translated by H. Blochmann. Calcutta: Baptist Mission
Press, 1873.
Fazl, Abul. Ain-i Akbari (2 vols). Edited by H. Blochmann (Persian text). Calcutta: Baptist
Mission Press, 1872.
Fazl, Abul Mukatabat-i Allami (Insha-i Abul Fazl) Daftar I. Edited and translated by
Mansura Haider. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers & Indian Council
of Historical Research, 1998.
Flatt, Emma J. ‘Practicing Friendship: Epistolary Constructions of Social Intimacy in the
Bahmani Sultanate’. Studies in History 33, no. 1 (2017): 61–81.
Flatt, Emma J. ‘Spices, Smell and Spells: The Use of Olfactory Substances in the Conjuring
of Spirits’. South Asian Studies 32, no. 1 (2016): 3–21.
Forbes, R.J. A Short History of the Art of Distillation. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1948.
Gerritsen, Anne. The City of Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and the Early Modern
World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Gerritsen, Anne, and Giorgio Riello, eds., Writing Material Culture History. London,
New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

350  Amrita Chattopadhyay

Gilmartin, David, and Bruce B. Lawrence, eds. Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious
Identities in Islamicate South Asia. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.
Gode, P.K. Studies in Indian Cultural History (3 vols). Hoshiarpur: Vishveshvaranand
Vedic Research Institute, 1961.
Gosden, Chris, and Marshall Yvonne. ‘The Cultural Biography of Objects’. World
Archaeology 31, no. 2 (1991):169–78.
Gupta, Riya. ‘Revisiting the Mirzanama: Class Consciousness and the Mughal Middle
Classes’. The Medieval History Journal 26, no. 1 (2023): 137–60.
Habib, Irfan. ‘Technological Changes and Society, 13th and 14th Centuries’. Presidential
Address, Medieval Indian Section, Indian History Congress, Varanasi: Proceedings of
Indian History Congress (1969): 139–61.
Habib, Irfan. The Agrarian System of Mughal India 1556–1707. 2nd revised edition. New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Habib, Irfan. Technology in Medieval India c. 650–1750. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2008.
Habib, Irfan. ‘The Technology and Economy of Mughal India’. The Indian Economic and
Social History Review XVII, no. 1 (1980):1–34.
Habib, Irfan. ‘Joseph Needham and the History of Indian Technology’. Indian Journal
of History of Science 35, no. 3 (2000): 245–74.
Haider, Najaf. ‘International Trade in Precious Metals and Monetary Systems of Medieval
India: 1200–1500 ad’. Proceedings of Indian History Congress 59 (1998): 237–54.
Hasan, Farhat. Paper, Performance and the State: Social Change and Political Culture in
Mughal India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Husain, Ali Akbar. Scent in the Islamic Garden: A Study of Deccani Urdu Literary Sources.
Karachi: Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2000.
Husain, Ali Akbar. ‘Perfuming the Heart: A Study of a Seventeenth-Century Perfumery
Treatise from Islamic India’. In Sound and Scent in the Garden, edited by D. Fairchild
Ruggles. Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2017.
Jahangir. Tuzuk-i Jahangiri (Persian text). Lucknow: Nawal Kishore Press, 1870.
Jahangir. Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, edited by Syed Ahmed and Translated by Alexander Rogers and
Henry Beveridge. London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1909–1914, 1989 (reprint).
Jahangir. The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India. Translated by
Wheeler M. Thackston. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press in association
with Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art, 1999.
Khan, Ali Muhammad. Mirat-i Ahmadi: A Persian History of Gujrat. Translated by M. F.
Lokhandwala. Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1965.
Khan, Dargah Quli. Muraqqa e Dehli: The Mughal Capital in Muhammad Shah’s Time.
Translated by Chander Shekhar and Shama Mitra Chenoy. New Delhi: Deputy
Publication, 1989.
Khan, Inayat. Shahjahan Nama: An Abridged History of the Mughal Emperor Shah
Jahan. Translated by A.R. Fuller and edited by W. E. Begley and Z. A. Desai. Delhi:
Oxford University, 1965.
Khan, Saqi Must’ad. Maasir-i Alamgiri. Translated by Jadunath Sarkar. Kolkata: Asiatic
Society, 2008.
Khan, Shah Nawaz. Maasiru’l Umara (2 vols). Translated by H. Beveridge and revised
by Baini Prashad. New Delhi: Janaki Prakashan, 1979.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352

 Indo-Islamicate Perfumes in Early Modern India  351

Krishnamurthy, Radha. ‘Perfumery In Ancient India’. Indian Journal of History of

Science 22, no. 1 (1987): 71–79.
Lalwani, Bharti. ‘Resurrected Scentscapes of 17th & 18th Century India’. Bagh-e Hind: Scent
Translations of Mughal and Rajput Garden Paintings, 2021. https://www.baghehind.
com/post/bagh-e-hind/
Lanzillo, Amanda, and Arun Kumar. ‘The Labour of Smell, and How the Artisan Attar
Industry Survived Pressure Across Ages’. The Wire, 2022. https://thewire.in/history/
perfume-workers-attar-colonial-india/
Laviolette, Patrick. ‘Introduction: Storing and Storying the Serendipity of Objects’. In Things
in Culture, Culture in Things, edited by A. Kannike, & P. Laviolette. Tartu: University
of Tartu Press, 2013.
Lienhard, Siegfried. ‘Observations Concerning a Buddhist Text on Erotics: Nagarasarvasav
of Padmasri’. Central Asiatic Journal 23, no. 1/2 (1979): 96–123.
Mahmud, Sayyid Husain. Nuzhatu’l Qulub. Orient Manuscript Collection, Salar Jung
Museum and Library, Hyderabad, MS. Acc. 1898.
Mahmud, Nizamuddin. Itr-i Naurus Shahi. British Library, London, MS. IO Islamic 3650.
Manucci, Niccolao. Storia do Mogor (4 vols). Translated by William Irwine. London: Royal
Asiatic Society, 1907.
Markel, Stephen. ‘Indian and “Indianate” Glass Vessels in the Los Angeles County Museum
of Art’. Journal of Glass Studies 33 (1991): 82–92.
McHugh, James. Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Mundy, Peter. The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia 1608–1667 (5 vols), edited
by R. C. Temple, vol. II. London: Haklyut Society, 1914.
Mytum, Harold. ‘Artefact Biography as an Approach to Material Culture: Irish Gravestones
as a Material Form of Genealogy’. The Journal of Irish Archaeology 12/13 (2013–2014):
111–27.
Nath, R. Private Life of the Mughals of India (1526–1803 ad.). New Delhi: Rupa, 2005.
Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China: Chemistry and Chemical Technology.
Vol. 5(4). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
O’Hanlon, Rosalind. ‘Manliness and Imperial Service in Mughal North India’. Journal
of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 42, no. 1 (1999): 47–93.
Padmasri. Nagarasarvasva, edited by Pandit Bhagirathaswami and Rajdhar Jha. Calcutta:
Srivenkateswar Pustak Agency, 1929.
Palsaert, Francisco. Jahangir’s India: The Remonstratie of F. Palsaert. Translated and
Edited by W. H. Moreland and P. Geyl. Delhi: Idarah-I-Adabiyat-I-Delli, 1972.
Pheru, Thakkura. Dravya Pariksha aur Dhatutpatti. Edited by B. Nahata. Research Institute
of Prakriti. Bihar: Jinalogy and Ahimsa, 1976.
Pheru, Thakkura. Thakkura Pheru’s Rayanaparikkha: A Medieval Prakrit Text on Gemmology.
Translated by Sreeramula Rajeswara Sarma. Aligarh: Viveka Publications, 1984.
Platts, John T. A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English. Digital Dictionaries of
South Asia.
Pollock, Sheldon. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture and
Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352 

352  Amrita Chattopadhyay

Rezavi, Syed Ali Nadeem. ‘Exploring the Mughal Gardens at Fatehpur Sikri’. Proceedings
of the Indian History Congress 58 (1997): 894–909.
Ruth, Nicolas. ‘Visual Nosegays: Plants and Scent in Early Modern South Asian Painting’.
Bagh-e Hind: Scent Translations of Mughal and Rajput Garden Paintings, 2022. https://
www.baghehind.com/post/visual-nosegays-plants-and-scent-in-early-modern-south-
asian-painting/
Shulman, David. ‘The Scent of Memory in Hindu South India’. Anthropology and
Aesthetics, no. 13, Spring (1987): 122–33.
Skinner, James, comp. Kitab-i Tashrihu’l Aqwam. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library
of Congress, MS. No. 34. https://www.loc.gov/item/2014658650/
Smail, Daniel Lord. ‘Persons and Things in Marseille and Lucca, 1300–1450’. In The Oxford
Handbook of History and Material Culture, edited by Ivan Gaskell and Sarah Anne
Carter, 379–99. Oxford: OUP, 2020.
Steingass, Francis Joseph. A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary. New Delhi:
Manohar, 2008.
Vermani, Neha. ‘The Perfumed Palate: Olfactory Practices of Food Consumption at the
Mughal Court’. Global Food History 9, no. 2 (2023): 107, 129.
Wagoner, Philip B. ‘Sultan Among Hindu Kings: Dress, Titles, and the Islamicization of
Hindu Culture at Vijayanagar’. The Journal of Asian Studies 55, no. 4 (1996): 851–80.

 The Medieval History Journal 26, 2 (2023): 314–352