What is attar (ittar), and how is it made?

By Omer Siton, founder of PerfuMate · Updated 2026-10-07

Attar, also written ittar or itr, is a perfume oil worn without alcohol. Traditionally it is made in Kannauj, in northern India, by distilling flowers, herbs or even baked earth in a copper still straight into sandalwood oil; today the word also covers any concentrated perfume oil sold to be worn neat.

What is attar (ittar), and does it contain alcohol?

An attar contains no alcohol: it is an oil, and for many people who wear one, that is the point. In the traditional method the scent is distilled into sandalwood oil; in the wider trade, attar is any concentrated perfume oil.

IFRA's guidance for its Standards describes attar broadly, as a concentrated fragrance oil with several uses, and notes that because it is free of ethanol, undiluted attar is preferred by various religious groups as a personal fragrance, and that it is most often worn neat. "Attar" and "ittar" are two spellings of the same word, and a concentrated perfume oil sold to be worn neat is an attar in that broad sense. The word reaches further still: the rose bulletin of the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program lists rose attar beside otto of rose and rose oil as names for the distilled oil itself.

How is attar made (deg and bhapka distillation into sandalwood oil)?

Flowers are boiled with water in a deg, a copper still; the scented steam travels through a bamboo pipe, the chonga, into a bhapka, a copper receiver that holds sandalwood oil and stands in cold water, and the scent condenses into the oil.

The steps, as a cluster report prepared for India's Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises describes them in Kannauj:

1. The flowers or other material go into the deg with water, and the lid is sealed with a mix of cotton and clay.
2. The bhapka is filled with the base oil, usually sandalwood oil, 5 to 10 kg of it, sealed, and set in a small water tank to stay cool.
3. The chonga joins the two and does the condensing; it is wrapped in gunny cloth to slow its heat loss.
4. The deg is heated over wood, with cow-dung cakes used to control the temperature, and the steam passes through the chonga and condenses into the sandalwood oil.
5. After four to five hours the bhapka is replaced and left to cool, and the water is separated from the oil through a hole in its base or by pouring into a trough.
6. When the attar has reached the strength wanted, it is stored in kuppi, bottles of buffalo or camel leather, which the report says help remove the last moisture.

The catalog carries five traditional attars, each a material distilled into sandalwood: Gulab Attar (damask rose), Motia Attar (Jasminum sambac), Kewda Attar (screwpine flower), Mitti Attar (baked earthen clay, the smell of rain on dry ground) and Shamama Attar, dozens of herbs, spices, roots and resins distilled together over days. The word is also used for perfume oils made the modern way, a concentrate of naturals and aroma chemicals dissolved in a carrier oil, and IFRA uses "attar-type fragrance" for diluted versions too. Those are made like any perfume oil.

Attar vs perfume: what is the difference?

An attar is an oil worn neat and a perfume is a concentrate diluted in alcohol: the scent materials can be the same, but the carrier, the strength, the way it is worn and even the IFRA category can differ.

Which is better is a matter of use, not quality: people who avoid alcohol choose an attar, as IFRA notes, and people who want a perfume that carries choose a spray. A traditional attar and a modern perfume oil differ mainly in how the oil was made; the strengths of alcohol perfumes are set out in perfume concentrations, explained.

Attar vs oud: what is the difference?

Oud is one material and attar is a format: oud oil is distilled from agarwood, the resin-filled wood of Aquilaria trees, while an attar is any perfume oil worn without alcohol, which may contain oud or none at all.

In nature, agarwood forms only when the tree is stressed, by lightning, fire, insects or microbes, a 2025 study in Molecules notes. The catalog carries it as Agarwood Essential Oil, Agarwood (Oud) Absolute and a CO2 extract. A bottle sold as "oud attar" can hold oud oil, oud in a carrier or an oud-type blend, so read what the seller declares; gulab, motia and mitti attars contain no oud at all. What oud is covers the material.

Does attar expire, and how long does it last?

An attar has no fixed expiry date: it keeps as long as its oil and its top notes do, so storage decides, and on skin it lasts long because it is worn neat on a slow base.

The base of a traditional attar is one of the slowest naturals there is: the catalog lists Sandalwood Essential Oil East Indian at 400 hours on a smelling strip, against 4 for lemon oil. In the bottle, the catalog carries no shelf life for any attar. Keep it full, sealed, cool and dark, as with any perfume material. A modern attar made in a kitchen oil can go rancid, while jojoba and fractionated coconut oil keep well. A sour or rancid smell, or a top that has vanished while the base smells as it always did, means it has changed. How a perfume ages.

How do you wear an attar, or use one in a perfume?

Wear it in small amounts, a drop or one stroke on the wrists or the neck, which is the fine-fragrance use IFRA's guidance describes; to use one in a perfume, treat it as a material, weigh it into a formula or dilute it, and check the result against IFRA like any other line.

That check applies to a traditional attar as to any natural, because IFRA limits follow the molecules inside a material, not where it comes from. What follows is an estimate, not a verdict on any attar: PerfuMate's IFRA calculator run on the catalog's typical composition for each traditional attar, as if it were worn neat as a fine fragrance.

• Gulab Attar: the catalog estimates about 0.3 percent methyl eugenol, which comes with the rose. At that level, a rose attar worn neat would carry about 27 times the Category 4 limit for methyl eugenol, and the estimate puts its ceiling at about 3.66 percent of the finished product, for example 0.3 g in a 10 ml jojoba roll-on of 8.6 g.
• Shamama Attar: the catalog estimates about 0.3 percent safranal, the saffron molecule, which worn neat would be about 25 times its limit, with a ceiling of about 4 percent.
• Motia, Kewda and Mitti Attar: by their estimated compositions, they reach no Category 4 limit, even neat.

Real batches differ with the maker, the flowers and the season, so the figure that decides is the one measured on your lot: IFRA's guidance says that where an analysis of a natural shows a different level of a restricted molecule from the indicative one, the analysed level is the one to use. Ask the supplier for the methyl eugenol or safranal content on the lot's certificate or analysis. Worn widely like a body oil, an attar is not a fine fragrance in IFRA's sense but Category 5A, which PerfuMate's check does not cover. As a material, the catalog suggests Gulab Attar as a pre-fixed rose heart in oud, saffron and amber bases, and an attar can be diluted in perfumer's alcohol, which IFRA counts as fine fragrance use. How to make a rose perfume.

PerfuMate's catalog carries the traditional attars with their typical constituents, so an attar weighed into a formula is checked against IFRA at the strength you bottle it, like any natural. Start a formula, free.

Sources:

• IFRA: Guidance for the use of IFRA Standards, 51st Amendment, section 6.5.16 and Table 10 (attars); section 1.4 (analysed levels replace indicative ones)
• Office of the Development Commissioner (MSME), Government of India: Cluster diagnostic report, Kannauj attar and essential oil cluster
• ABC Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program: Rose (Rosa x damascena) essential oil bulletin, June 2024
• Zhang et al., Molecules 2025: Volatile compounds of agarwood oils (formation of agarwood)
• IFRA: IFRA Standards Library (51st Amendment, Category 4)