Bakhoor Explained: Types, Fragrance, Uses & How to Choose the Right One
Nobody warns you about this before your first bakhoor purchase: there's no single "bakhoor smell." Two blends can smell like they came from totally different product categories. One's sweet, floral, almost powdery. Another's dark and smoky, medicinal even, the kind of thing that makes you flinch a little the first time. So if you walked in picturing something candle-like and predictable, that's on whatever page sold it to you, not on you. Bakhoor (also spelled bukhoor or bakhur, from the Arabic بخور) is wood. Usually agarwood. Oud, if that's the term you already know. It gets soaked or blended with fragrant oils, resins, musk, sandalwood, sometimes spices, and then heated until it smoulders. That word "heated" is doing a lot of work. There's no flame running through bakhoor the way there is with an incense stick, nothing self-sustaining about it. You supply the heat. Only then does the smell actually show up. Form and scent get mixed up con...