Raza Perfume guides ·
Kannauj: how attar is made
On the banks of the Ganga in Uttar Pradesh, the town of Kannauj has made perfume for centuries. It is often called India’s perfume capital, and walking its lanes you can smell why: rose, vetiver, sandalwood and wet earth drift out of the distilleries.
It is also where our story began. In 1984, our founder Yasinali Sayed went to Kannauj to learn the craft of fragrance. Two years later, in 1986, he founded Raza Perfume.
Deg and bhapka: distillation the old way
Kannauj still distils much of its attar with a method that has hardly changed in hundreds of years.
- The deg. Fresh flowers, roots or herbs go into a large copper still with water. The deg is sealed, traditionally with clay, and heated over a wood fire.
- The chonga. As the water boils, fragrant steam rises and travels through a bamboo pipe wrapped in cord.
- The bhapka. The pipe leads into a copper receiver, the bhapka, which sits in a tank of cool water. Inside the bhapka is the base oil, traditionally sandalwood oil.
- Capture. The steam condenses in the bhapka, and the base oil absorbs the fragrance. The process is repeated, often over days, until the oil is rich with scent.
The distiller judges the fire, the water and the timing by eye, touch and smell. It is slow work, and it is why a traditional attar feels so different from a modern spray.
The classic attars of Kannauj
- Ruh gulab (rose). The essence of rose, often from the fragrant Rosa damascena. Soft, deep and romantic.
- Mitti attar. Clay from the earth is baked and distilled to capture the smell of the first rain on dry soil. Many people find it unforgettable.
- Khus (vetiver). From the roots of vetiver grass: green, earthy and cooling, loved in the summer.
- Shamama. A complex blend of many herbs, spices and resins distilled together: warm, dark and rich.
- Heena. A warm, spicy, herbal attar traditionally worn in the cooler months.
- Sandalwood (chandan). Creamy and calming, both a fragrance on its own and the classic base for other attars.
Kannauj today
Kannauj’s distillers now supply perfumers across India and abroad, and the town is home to the Fragrance & Flavour Development Centre (FFDC), a government institute that trains people in fragrance and supports the industry. Traditional deg-and-bhapka attars sit alongside modern perfumery, and many fragrance lovers wear both.
The Kannauj thread at Raza Perfume
Four decades on, the care Yasinali brought back from Kannauj runs through everything we do in Kalyan: judging raw materials, blending by hand, and the attars we make alongside our perfumes. Every Raza fragrance is available as attar in 6 and 12 ml, including rose and sandalwood fragrances such as Ruh Gulab, Kaccha Gulab, Kesar Chandan and Heena.