The 'attar (perfumer and druggist)

Like al-Saydalani, the word 'attar primarily meant a perfume merchant or druggist. Since most scents and most drugs were credited with some healing property, 'attar also came to mean chemist and homoeopath (mutatabbib). His activities combined commerce with science and medicine. Al-Dimashqi said that he had to know the diverse drugs, cures, drafts and scents, their good and bad varieties and what was fraudulent, which things changed or spoiled quickly, how they could be preserved or reconstituted, and how drafts, potions, powders and spices were mixed. Today the term sometimes also includes dyers, though perfume merchants are the noblest and wealthiest of the 'attarun. ¹

Herbal remedies, the greater part of the medicines offered, were sold dry: roots and wood chopped small, herbs, leaves and flowers whole or crushed, fruit and seed simply dried. Medicines were usually given in simple form, but were sometimes compounded by the 'attar in the presence of the patient. The professional knowledge of the bazaar druggist was often slight, and his medicines were often spoiled by storage in unsuitable conditions. Druggists were known for cheating in measures, and the entry notes specialised treatises on fraud, such as the Kitab al-Mukhtar fi Kashf al-Asrar, and treatises on the duties of the market inspector (muhtasib). ²

The best-known druggists' quarter of the old Fustat, the suq al-'attarin, was burned completely in 563 AH (1168), though it was rebuilt under the Mamluks according to Ibn Dukmak; the Geniza documents also refer to it. The 'attar appears frequently as a cognomen, especially among poets and scholars for whom the trade may have been an additional source of income; the best known instance is Farid al-Din 'Attar, who is treated in a separate article. ³