The Byzantine empire, in the East, heir of Rome, it took its relief in the perfume art and it developed a very important industry, perhaps more than the one of Rome, for the fact of having more close the raw materials and to count on a labour force of native population of their Eastern neighbours with a perfume tradition; whereas Rome was an eminently importer country. But it would not take too much time in arising a new perfume power, the one of the Arabs.
The south of Arabia is desert today, but in the oldest times was a paradisiacal land where the abundance of leafy forests and the beauty of their gardens, with their aromatic trees they turned it into a mysterious and exotic one. From well-known distant Arabia, for the classical ones called "the Land of perfumes", the caravans of camels arrived until the Mediterranean coasts, that crossing the desert, they transported the incense and the essences to the West markets. A new civilization, a new culture based on a religious fact begins in Arabia at the beginning of VII century. Mahoma preaches his doctrine and he founds the Islam that in just a short time will extend from the middle East to Spain. Mahoma, as a good Arab, was a lover of the perfume and in the Coran is promised a perfumed paradise to the believers, with great rivers, trees and gardens, and beautiful houris of black eyes, done of the most purest musk.
The Arabs were great experts in perfumery who knew how to assimilate and to perfect the knowledge of the previous cultures, taking advantage of their knowledge and their new techniques. They bought up to date the still to distil the alcohol, which they used like essences support, in order to elaborate perfumes and also they extended the use of the Water of Roses, the musk and the civet, of which they became the queens of the aromas in all the Middle Ages. Just a short time later, those ones that returned from the crusades and the merchants that returned of East also they ordered to introduce perfumes in all West.
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