Mukhallat means blend in Arabic. In its proper sense, it refers to a fragrance made by combining different oils together, materials that have already been distilled, tinctured, or otherwise prepared elsewhere, then mixed into a single composition. Attar, in its original and stricter sense, means something different, a fragrance made through distillation itself, with plant material distilled directly into a base of sandalwood oil, the traditional Indian deg-bhapka method.
So technically, they’re not the same thing at all. One is a mixture of finished materials. The other is a distillation process in its own right.
Two Different Traditions
The distinction comes from two genuinely different traditions. Attar, in its strict sense, comes out of India, tied closely to Kannauj and the deg-bhapka method that’s been used there for centuries. Mukhallat comes out of the Middle East, where perfumers worked differently, combining already-finished materials like oud oil, ambergris, musk, and rose rather than distilling raw material into a base themselves. Two regions, two methods, and two words that each described something specific within their own tradition.
A Simple Example
A single rose attar, distilled directly into sandalwood, is an attar in the strict sense but not a mukhallat, since nothing’s been blended into it. A combination of rose oil and sandalwood oil blended together, rather than distilled together, would be a mukhallat, albeit an extremely simple one.
What Gets Called What Today
In practice, that distinction has mostly disappeared from how the words are actually used. Attar has become the word people reach for regardless of how something was actually made, and most of what gets called attar today, by makers all over the world, is really mukhallat by the stricter definition. My own work is a good example of this. What I make are mukhallats, blends of oils, absolutes, and infusions combined together, not single materials distilled into a base the traditional way. But I call them attars, because that’s the word people know and search for, and because that’s genuinely what the word means to most people now.
