A petal, held between two fingers, almost translucent. Crush it gently and a scent rises, dense, a little honeyed, a little fruity, never quite sweet – nothing like the flat smell of the florist's ornamental roses. It is this immediately perceptible difference that has made the Damask Rose far more than a decorative flower: a precious material, fought over for centuries by perfumers, physicians and cooks.
A botany more complex than it seems
Rosa Damascena does not exist in the wild. It is a hybrid, born from the crossing of several species – Rosa gallica, Rosa moschata or phoenicia, and Rosa fedtschenkoana according to the most recent studies of its DNA. A composite rose, in short, made jointly by nature and man, somewhere between Persia and the Levant.
Its name, however, is almost misleading. Most botanists today agree that its true cradle lies in Persia, around Shiraz, rather than in Damascus itself. But it is Damascus, an unavoidable trading crossroads of its time, that gave it its identity: it was through this city, an obligatory relay on the merchant routes between Persia and the Mediterranean, that the rose became known to the West.
A journey between Avicenna and the Crusaders
The story of its spread reads almost like a novel. At the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries, the Persian physician and philosopher Avicenna is said to have been the first to perfect the distillation of rose essential oil – a technical breakthrough that would turn a simple ornamental flower into a leading medicinal and cosmetic material. The Persian Empire, where the rose held such a central place that it was sometimes nicknamed “the Empire of Roses”, spread its cultivation as far as Damascus, then a strategic outpost renowned for its gardens.
It was from there that the Crusaders, returning from their expeditions to the Holy Land, brought the rose back to Europe. Legend credits the knight Robert de Brie with having brought back a plant around 1254, to the town of Provins, which from then on became a major centre of rose cultivation in France. A few centuries later, in the 17th century, it was Bulgaria that took over on a large scale, in the Kazanlik region – still known today as the Valley of the Roses – before the technique and the plants were in turn transplanted to Turkey, then to Morocco, where the Berber tribes of the Kelaat M'Gouna region created another valley of roses, on an entirely different continent.
What gods and prophets made of it
Like saffron, the Damask Rose has never travelled without legends.
In Greek mythology, it is said to have been born from the tears of Aphrodite, goddess of love, mingled with the blood of her mortally wounded lover Adonis – a union of pain and beauty that has, ever since, made the rose the universal symbol of love and eternal beauty. Another, later legend credits Cleopatra with the habit of scenting her ships' sails with rose water before docking, so that her fragrance would precede her arrival and announce, on its own, the seduction to come.
In the Muslim world, the rose holds an even more sacred place. In Persian, it is nicknamed Gol-e Mohammadi – literally “the flower of the Prophet Mohammed”. A persistent tradition links it directly to him: some accounts say it was born of his sweat, or his blood, making the red rose a symbol of martyrdom and devotion. This sacred link endures very concretely today: every year, the Kaaba in Mecca is washed in a solemn ceremony with rose water from Kashan, in Iran – one of the historic centres of its cultivation.
Perfumery, medicine, cuisine: one flower, three lives
Few natural raw materials have so thoroughly conquered three such different worlds.
In perfumery, the Damask Rose remains one of the most sought-after and expensive ingredients in the world. Two techniques allow its fragrance to be extracted: distillation, which requires around three and a half tonnes of petals for a single kilo of essence, and extraction with volatile solvents, an even more demanding process requiring nearly 700 kilos of petals for a kilo of absolute – a “rounder”, denser material than the essence obtained by distillation. It is hardly surprising, then, that the harvest itself follows a strict pace: around five kilos of petals per hour per picker, starting at seven in the morning, before the heat dissipates the volatile oils – a rhythm not unlike that of saffron. The greatest fashion houses still source it from Bulgaria, Turkey or Morocco to compose their most precious perfumes.
In traditional medicine, its use again dates back to Avicenna: ointments, skin balms, remedies for inflammation. Even today, research continues to look into its soothing properties – a recent scientific review points to a significant effect of Damask rose aromatherapy on the intensity of acute pain, though this does not, at this stage, make it a recognised medical treatment.
In cuisine, finally, it occupies an immense place in Persian and Levantine gastronomy: rose water perfumes Turkish delight, honey and almond pastries, certain festive rice dishes, while the dried petals sometimes lend a slow-cooked dish an unexpected floral touch. Few ingredients cross the border between sweet, savoury and sacred with such ease.
A flower that has also lived through war
Like Aleppo soap, the Damask Rose today carries a more painful contemporary history. In December 2019, UNESCO inscribed the practices and skills associated with the damask rose of the village of Al-Mrah, in Syria, on the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity – a recognition that, as with the soap, honours a rural craft directly affected by years of conflict. Here too, the rose is not merely a precious material: it is a thread linking generations of pickers, in villages where the harvest remains, like that of saffron, a manual, precise and strictly seasonal gesture.
It is this same flower, its petals barely crushed, that we find infused in one of our teas – a delicate floral note, inherited directly from this long Persian and Levantine history. It is this same flower that we find in the sophisticated scent of L'Éternelle, our scented candle composed by Francis Kurkdjian, pairing Damask rose with plum….. (to be finalised)
What the Damask Rose ultimately tells is a familiar story: that of a material born somewhere between Persia and the Levant, shaped by age-old trade routes, and which continues, even today, to carry within it the memory of every world it has crossed – sacred, sensual, medicinal, culinary – without ever having had to choose between them.
