The History of the Oud Trade Between Indonesia and the Arab World

Between the forests of the Indonesian archipelago and the assemblies of the Arabian Peninsula is a thread of smoke centuries old. Studies describe the oud trade as an ancient trade that linked the forests of Southeast Asia with the Chinese and Middle Eastern markets, and at the heart of this tale stands Indonesia: the land of gaharu, where the most precious pieces are gathered from the forests, then cross the seas to reach an Arab nose that knows their value. This article tells the history of this thread specifically — from where the Indonesian oud came out, across which ports and winds it traveled, at whose hands, and why the Gulf became its final and most beloved station. And for us at Oud Treasure it is not merely a historical subject, but our own story: for we are today's link in this chain, from the oud harvesters in the archipelago to your majlis. And if you want the broader context of the whole history of oud, begin from our mother article on the history of oud and how it traveled from Asia to the Arabian Peninsula.

The names of oud in Indonesia: what does gaharu mean?

In Indonesia one does not say "oud" but gaharu. And it is the common name for the aromatic resinous wood in Malay and Indonesian, and its roots go back — as the linguistic sources indicate — to the same family of ancient Asian names from which the Sanskrit name Agaru came, the root whose story we detailed in our article on the oldest historical references to agarwood. For the Indonesian name is not an isolated local name, but a link in a linguistic chain extending from India to the archipelago, testifying to the antiquity of the movement of this commodity and its knowledge among peoples.

And gaharu in Indonesian culture is not merely an export commodity. For the local communities in the islands of the archipelago knew this wood in their daily and ritual life since antiquity: an incense for occasions, a material known in folk traditions, and before all of that a means of livelihood for those who know the paths of the forest. And because the Indonesian archipelago is a mosaic of hundreds of local languages, the wood carried in the dialects of the islands multiple local names and variations, even though "gaharu" remained the comprehensive name at which the markets meet.

And when an Arab merchant says "Indonesian oud" and a gatherer from Kalimantan says "gaharu," they are speaking of the same thing from two different banks of one sea — and this linguistic duality, oud/gaharu, is the first trace of the centuries of trade we chronicle in this article. And whoever wishes to see what this name means practically today, let him contemplate the Indonesian oud collection with its multiple origins: all of it is gaharu, and each origin an independent personality.

The historical oud-gathering regions in the archipelago

Indonesia is not a single country in terms of oud, but a miniature continent of origins. For the trees of the genus Aquilaria and its relatives are spread in the forests of far-flung islands, and each island has its soil, its climate, and its strains, and this is why oud experts always speak of the archipelago's origins in the plural. And the most prominent of these regions historically associated with the gathering of gaharu:

Kalimantan (Borneo): the great jungle treasury

The Indonesian part of the island of Borneo, with its vast rainforests, is among the most famous and deep-rooted gaharu-gathering regions. The local communities in the interior of the island — at their head the Dayak peoples known for their expertise in the forest — inherited the knowledge of the jungle paths and the positions of the trees generation after generation. And the name Kalimantan among oud lovers today is a title of quality in its own right, led by the pieces of Kalimantan oud in the auctions and assemblies of oud.

Sumatra: the neighbor closest to the trade routes

The island of Sumatra, located directly on the Strait of Malacca, combined two advantages: gaharu-producing forests, and geographic proximity to the greatest maritime passage in the region. And this is why it was natural for its oud to be among the earliest that the foreign markets knew. And Sumatran oud remains to this day an independent scent school that the experts know from the first breath.

Papua: the far, deep frontier

In the far east of the archipelago lies Papua with its dense forests that remained for far-distant centuries away from the beaten paths, and this is why it became famous in recent decades especially as one of the last frontiers rich in gaharu. The pieces of Papua oud carry in their scent something of this isolation: a depth and a beloved wildness that the knowers seek.

Sulawesi and Maluku: the Spice Islands know fragrance

And between the east and the west lie Sulawesi and the Maluku Islands — the historical Spice Islands that the ancient world knew for clove and nutmeg. These islands that professionalized the export of scents and flavors for centuries were and still are among the gaharu-gathering regions as well, and their oud — as in Sulawesi oud and Maluku oud — has its own presence for whoever traces the origins.

And in all of these regions the backbone of the trade was the local human being: the oud harvesters who enter the forest for days and weeks, reading the trees a reading not learned from a book, and distinguishing the injured tree that formed the resin from a sound one of no good in it. These are the first of the chain and its origin; for before the port, the ship, and the market, there is an expert hand that wrests from the heart of the tree its treasure. And every piece of oud that reached an Arab majlis across history began its journey in the hand of one of them.

The role of the Indonesian islands and ports in the trade

The forest produces, but the port is what trades. And the geography of the Indonesian archipelago — thousands of islands extending at the crossroads between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea — made it by its nature a nation of ports. For a commodity gathered in the depth of the forests of Borneo or Papua is worth nothing commercially until it descends to a coast, and from the coast to a collection center, and from it to a ship crossing the seas.

And the historical sources note, with a generality the researcher can trust, that the archipelago has known since long centuries maritime kingdoms whose trade stood upon control of the passages and ports, and among the most famous of them is the Srivijaya kingdom that took southeastern Sumatra as its base, and which the studies described as having been a maritime commercial power dominant over the Strait of Malacca and its surroundings for centuries. And in an economy like this, the precious forest products — gaharu foremost among them along with camphor and spices — were among the pillars of what crossed these ports toward the far markets.

Then Malacca later emerged on the opposite bank of the strait as a great transit point where the ships of the West coming from the Indian Ocean met the ships of the East and the boats of the archipelago, until the historians of trade described it as having been among the greatest markets of the world in the diversity of its goods at its peak. In such stations the pieces were sorted, repackaged, and haggled over by various tongues, before they completed their journey abroad toward India and the Gulf or eastward toward China.

The historical lesson here is that Indonesian oud did not reach the Arabs by chance, but through a mature maritime commercial structure: a gatherer in the forest, a merchant on the river, a local port, a regional center, then an ocean ship. And it is the structure that the modern trade inherited under new names — and we will return to it in the modern-trade section below.

The maritime routes across the Indian Ocean

How does an aromatic piece of wood cross thousands of nautical miles in the age of the sail? The answer is in a single word every ancient sailor in the Indian Ocean knew: the monsoon winds. For this ocean works as a giant air clock: winds push the ships in one direction in a season, then reverse and return them in the opposite season. And to the rhythm of this clock was built one of the oldest systems of maritime trade in the world, linking the coasts of the Arabian Peninsula with India, and India with Southeast Asia, in a chain of stations the captains know generation after generation.

And research reports indicate that the gaharu trade from Southeast Asia to China and the Middle East goes back to long centuries. And here a methodological precision we are keen on is necessary: oud was not the commodity of an independent route of its own, nor is it historically correct to attach it to the famous frankincense-and-myrrh road in the south of the Arabian Peninsula; the more accurate — as the sources depict — is that the oud trade merged into the broader maritime and land networks that carried perfumes, spices, and precious goods between Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. For the ship that carried spices, silk, and camphor carried in its precious crates gaharu as well; a commodity small in size and high in value, ideal for long-distance trade.

As for the stations, they were the knots of the chain: from the ports of the archipelago and the Strait of Malacca to the ports of India and Ceylon, and from them across the Arabian Sea to the ports of the peninsula and the Gulf, where the goods were distributed in the inland markets. Each station added a middleman, an expertise, and a price, and this is why oud reached the Arab majlis having passed through many hands — all of which knew its value. And we detailed the map of this maritime system and its ports in the maritime trade section of the history-of-oud article, for it is the mother story of which this article is one of its Indonesian chapters.

The role of the Arab, Indian, and Malay merchants

Trade is not merely routes and ports, but human beings who mediate, translate, and are entrusted. And the oud trade between the archipelago and the Arab world stood historically upon the complementarity of three great human links, each with its position in the chain:

The Malay merchants and the people of the archipelago were the link of the source: they are the ones who buy from the oud harvesters at the edges of the forests and rivers, know the classification of gaharu in its first language, and carry it to the collection ports. And the Indian merchants were the great middle link: for the ports of India lie in the middle of the maritime route by their nature, and their trade networks are deep-rooted on both banks of the ocean, so much of the archipelago's oud passed through their markets and was re-exported. And the Arab merchants were the link of the destination and beyond: for the sources describe an active Arab commercial presence in the ports of the Indian Ocean reaching Southeast Asia over centuries, until known Arab communities arose in the coastal cities of the archipelago — many of them of Hadhrami origin — that merged into the local society and remained a living bond between the two banks to this day.

And across these middlemen not only the goods moved, but knowledge, names, and taste moved: the terms of classification and grades, the criteria of examination, and the reports of the markets and their desires. For the Arab merchant carried to the archipelago the taste of the Gulf majlis and what it demands, and the Malay merchant carried to the West the knowledge of the origins and the differences. And these very human channels were among the gates of the spread of Islam in the archipelago, as is well known in the general history of Southeast Asia — until Indonesia became today the largest Muslim country in the world by population, and between the source and the destination there became a bond deeper than trade.

And we at Oud Treasure see ourselves as a direct extension of this heritage: Arabs working from the heart of the archipelago, buying from the oud harvesters and their communities directly, and carrying to the Gulf the goods and the knowledge together — as the merchants of this route did centuries before us. Get to know our story on the about us page.

Why did the Gulf become one of the most important consumption markets?

A country may produce oud and not adore it, and a country in which not a single oud grows may adore it. And the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula are of the second kind in its purest form: a land in which Aquilaria does not grow, but which became — by the consensus of the people of this trade — among the most important oud markets in consumption and the highest in taste. And this has deep cultural reasons before it has economic ones:

First: the majlis and hospitality. In Gulf culture, bukhoor is a pillar of honoring the guest; for the burner circles upon those present at the closing of the majlis its known round, and the fine oud is a message of appreciation that needs no translation. And from here oud in the Gulf was not a personal luxury, but a social etiquette by which homes are measured. Second: the seasons and feasts. Ramadan, the two Eids, the weddings, and the seasons of joy are all oud seasons, in which the demand multiplies and the homes bring out the most precious of what they saved. Third: daily perfuming. Perfuming the clothes and the assemblies with oud is a firmly rooted, inherited habit, which makes the consumption continuous throughout the year, not only seasonal.

Then the modern age came and added to these cultural roots a decisive factor: purchasing power. For with the Gulf economic renaissance in recent decades there came to the region a wide public able to acquire the finest grades, and the inherited taste turned into one of the most active oud markets in the world, in which the rare pieces are demanded by their names and origins — and much of the most precious that comes out of the forests of the archipelago heads today to this market specifically. Until the knowers came to say that the Gulf taste is among the most precise scales of quality: a market that knows the difference between the aged natural oud and what is below it from the first burning.

How the modern trade developed: shipping and documentation

The route of oud between Indonesia and the Gulf has never been cut, but it changed its tools. For in the place of the sailing ship are cargo planes and humidity-controlled containers, and in the place of the merchants' letters are documents of origin and export invoices, and in the place of the months of waiting are a few counted days between Jakarta and Riyadh or Dubai.

Regulation and sustainability. The most important transformation in recent decades is that the trade became internationally regulated: for the oud tree species of the genus Aquilaria are listed in the CITES convention on the international trade in endangered species, meaning that their lawful export is subject to permits and oversight aimed at protecting the wild trees from depletion. And this — with a frankness we love — is good news, not an annoying restriction: for the future of this ancient trade is contingent on the survival of its trees, and the documented, lawful trade is the only one that preserves for wild oud its value and for its forests their tomorrow.

The wild and the cultivated. And with the tightening of the protection of the wild trees there grew in Indonesia and its neighbors Aquilaria plantations in which the injury is induced artificially to produce the resin, so the market came to have two tributaries: a rare wild oud whose value keeps rising, and a more widely available cultivated oud. And each of them has its station and its price, and the important thing — as we always repeat — is that each of them be sold by its correct name without deception.

Documentation and certificates. The modern buyer, whether an individual or a wholesale merchant, has come to ask questions that his great-grandfather did not have the luxury of posing: from which island is this piece? Is it wild or cultivated? And what are the documents of its departure? And these questions are the fortress of the market against fraud, and we count them a genuine right of the buyer, not a favor from us.

And where does Oud Treasure stand from all of this? At the position this ancient chain loves: the point closest to the source. We work from inside Indonesia, and buy from the oud harvesters and the gathering communities directly without queues of middlemen, then we sort, document, and ship to the Gulf and the Arab world. By this there reaches your majlis an oud of a known origin and a short route, and at source prices, not end-of-chain prices — for individuals through our collections, and for wholesale merchants through wholesale oud and the export service dedicated to large orders. It is not a new idea we boast of; it is the oldest idea in this trade, we have only returned it to its first simplicity: from the forest to the majlis.

A timeline: milestones of the oud trade between the archipelago and the Arabs

These are the most prominent milestones of this route in their broad outlines — and the dates of ancient trade are approximate by their nature, as we always caution:

The conclusion of the story is that the relationship between Indonesia and the Arab world in oud is not a modern deal, but a maritime heritage centuries old: a forest that grants, ports that connect, winds that carry, merchants who translate, and an Arab majlis waiting at the end of the route. And all that has changed is the speed and the documentation; as for the essence of the journey, it is the same since the first sail.

Read also

This article is part of our series on the history and culture of oud:

• The history of oud: how did it travel from the forests of Southeast Asia to the Arabian Peninsula?
• When did the use of oud begin? The oldest historical references to agarwood
• The history of gaharu in Indonesia: from the forests to global trade
• Oud in Arab and Islamic history: from perfuming to assemblies and hospitality
• The kinds of oud trees and the regions of their growth (soon)
• The difference between oud's origins and how you distinguish them with your nose (soon)
• The art of burning: from the coal to the electric burner (soon)