Sumatran Ghaliya

There are perfumes that decorate, and there are perfumes that honour. Ghaliya has always been the latter.

Born in the candle-lit majlis of Umayyad and Abbasid courts, ghaliya was more than fragrance, it was presence. Composed from the treasures of the old world, Kashmiri musk, Indian oud, ambergris, Mysore sandalwood, saffron, and rose, it marked the line between the ordinary and the sacred.

At Hunayn, our journey began with The Trilogy of Attars, Shuyukhi, Malaki, and Sultani, each built on the sacred six, each representing a different spirit: the scholar, the counsellor, and the ruler. Yet the question remained: what if ghaliya were made today?

The answer became Sumatran Ghaliya: a reimagination of the form through the materials and hands of our own age. At its base lies aged Sumatran oud, the canvas, upon which are layered vivid strokes of hyacinth, civet, boronia, juhi, and ambergris. Each ingredient carries the fingerprint of a craftsman: the Japanese farmer tending to citrus orchards; the Indian distiller coaxing juhi into memory; the Tasmanian harvester gathering boronia before it fades. Every note is a person’s devotion made visible.

Unlike its predecessors, Sumatran Ghaliya is not an act of preservation, but of translation. It is ghaliya as it might have been if it were invented today, abstract, global, reverent. A perfume that invites the wearer to listen for patterns within its seeming chaos, and in doing so, to find unity in the fragments of the world.