The History of Kalimantan Oud and Its Trade: From the Forests of Borneo

When we speak of Kalimantan oud, we are speaking of the heart of the island of Borneo, veined with rivers. For Kalimantan — the Indonesian part of the world's third-largest island — is not merely a name on the map of fragrances, but a whole system of dense rainforests cut through by great rivers, and peoples who inherited the knowledge of the forest, and ports that carried the gaharu from the interior to the world. In this article we present a self-contained reference about this region specifically: its trees, its people, its rivers, its ports, its names, and its place in the oud trade in the past and the present. And it is the first of a regional series, each of which we devote to one of the origins of Indonesian oud.

The geography of Kalimantan and its forests

Kalimantan lies on the island of Borneo, and it is — with a known geographic generality — among the largest islands of Indonesia in area, indeed among the largest islands of the world. And the island itself is politically divided among three states: Indonesia, whose part is called Kalimantan, and Malaysia, and the Sultanate of Brunei. So when it is said "Borneo oud" or "Kalimantan oud," what is meant is a wide region extending over vast expanses of lowland forests and interior hills.

Kalimantan is clothed in tropical rainforests among the densest that the earth knows. Heavy rains throughout the year, high humidity, steady heat, and a soil nourished by the continuous decomposition of the plant cover — this system is what makes an ideal environment for an immense botanical diversity, and among it the trees of the genus Aquilaria in which oud forms. For the tree that may produce oud does not live alone, but within a complex forest fabric that it needs in order to grow over the course of long years.

And what matters for understanding Kalimantan oud is that these forests are not a level surface easy to reach, but a rugged interior interspersed with heights and swamps and rivers. This ruggedness is what made reaching the oud trees a journey and not a stroll, and it is what drew — as we will see — the routes of transport across the rivers instead of the land roads. Geography here is not a background to the story, but the story itself.

Added to that is that Kalimantan extends over a vast area in which the environments are distributed: lowland near the coasts and the river mouths, swamp forests seasonally flooded with water, and interior hills higher and more remote. And this environmental diversity means that the habitats of the oud trees are not identical across the region, and that reaching them varies in difficulty according to the location. And from here, speaking of "Kalimantan oud" is speaking of a wide umbrella under which multiple environments and locations gather, not of a single homogeneous source.

The oud trees in Kalimantan

Kalimantan — and Borneo generally — is mentioned as a historical home for a number of species of the genus Aquilaria in which oud forms. And among the species that are mentioned in this context, with an honest generality, are the Aquilaria species such as Aquilaria malaccensis, and Aquilaria beccariana, and Aquilaria microcarpa. And we affirm that this is a mention of what appears in the literature about the region, not a decisive enumeration; for the distribution of the species in the tropical forest is a matter in which the local details overlap.

And the rule that governs oud in all its habitats applies to Kalimantan: the healthy tree does not carry oud, but rather the dark aromatic resin forms when the tree is exposed to a wound or a fungal infection, so it responds over the course of years by secreting the material that we call oud. And for this reason oud remains scant by its nature, since only a limited proportion of the trees carries it. And we detailed this wider transformation — from dependence on the wild trees to managed cultivation — in wild and cultivated oud.

What distinguishes the approach to oud in Kalimantan historically is that the greater reliance was on searching in the forest for the naturally infected trees. For knowing which tree may carry oud — without cutting it in vain — is a precise skill that the people of the forest accumulated across generations, and it is the axis of the following chapter.

And it is worth cautioning that the scientific names of the species are one thing, and the market's classification of oud is another; for the trader and the consumer rarely deal with the name of the botanical species directly, but rather with the description of the origin, the grade, and the character. And for this reason our mention of the Aquilaria species here is a botanical historical context that introduces the home of the tree, not a selling standard; since the material arriving at the market remains described by its origin — Kalimantan or its sub-regions — more than it is described by its precise botanical name.

The peoples of the forest: the Dayak and the gathering of gaharu

Kalimantan oud cannot be understood in isolation from the Dayak peoples, which is the collective name for multiple indigenous groups that inhabit the forested interior of Borneo. For these are the people of the forest most knowledgeable of it: they read its terrain, and know its trees, and distinguish its signs. And their knowledge of the habitats of the gaharu trees and of how to infer them is an inherited knowledge, transmitted by practice and accompaniment, not by books.

The gathering of gaharu in Kalimantan was — and still is in part of it — forest journeys that may extend for days. The oud extractors enter the depths of the forest searching for the trees that carry the signs of infection, and the matter requires patience and expertise in distinguishing between what is worth the trouble and what is not. And we stress here the correct naming: these are extractors and gatherers of oud, not "hunters"; for the work is a precise knowledge-craft closer to reading in the forest than to a chase.

And beside the Dayak in the interior, there emerged on the coasts and the rivers traders and intermediaries from the Malay and the Banjar, who took on the transport of gaharu from the interior gathering sites to the ports and the trade networks. This division — the people of the interior gather, and the people of the coast and the river transport and trade — is a social and economic structure that explains how Kalimantan oud arrived from the heart of the forest to distant markets.

And this relationship between the interior and the coast is not merely a division of labor, but a network of trust and exchange that centuries accumulated. For the river intermediary who knows the gatherers of the interior knows also the quality of what they carry and its source, and becomes a link through which the knowledge of the material moves, not the material alone. And for this reason understanding Kalimantan oud requires respecting all these links: from the eye that read the tree in the forest, to the hand that carried it on the river, to the market that received it at the coast. And it is a structure we are keen to keep present in our minds when we speak of the origin of any piece.

The rivers: the arteries of the oud trade

If you want a single mark that distinguishes the story of Kalimantan oud from any other, it is the rivers. For on an island where the land road inside the rugged forest is scarce, the great rivers became the historical arteries of transport that connect the forested interior with the coast. The gaharu is gathered in the depths of the forest, then transported by river — through the canoes and the boats — descending with the flow of the water to the coastal ports where the wider trade meets.

Three rivers lead this story. The Barito river, which empties near Banjarmasin in the south, and the Mahakam river, which cuts through the east toward Samarinda, and the Kapuas river in the west, which is mentioned among the longest rivers of Indonesia. These three rivers drew — with a generality — the axes of transport upon which the goods of the interior, and the gaharu among them, moved toward the sea outlets.

And the river transport was not a neutral means, but shaped the whole rhythm of the trade. For the journey with the flow of the water differs from the one against it, and the level of the rivers changes with the seasons of the rains, and all this used to determine when the gaharu is gathered and when it is transported. So the rhythm of the oud trade in Kalimantan was tied to the rhythm of the river itself: ascending in the interior in search of the trees, and descending laden toward the coast. The river here is a clock that regulates the movement before it is a road.

And the riverside villages are the links on this thread. For on the banks of the rivers arose small communities that worked as meeting points between the gatherers of the interior and the traders of the coast; at them the goods gather and are exchanged before they complete their road. This river structure — not the roads nor the railways — is what determined over the course of centuries how Kalimantan oud moves, and why the ports arose where they arose: at the mouths of the rivers where the water of the interior meets the water of the sea.

The ports and the commercial kingdoms

At the mouths of the rivers and the outlets of the coast arose the ports of Kalimantan that connected the region with the world. In the south Banjarmasin near the mouth of the Barito, and in the east Samarinda on the Mahakam and Balikpapan on the coast, and in the west Pontianak, which is mentioned as lying near the equator. These ports are where the gaharu passed from the river boat to the wider maritime trade network.

And these outlets were historically tied to commercial kingdoms and sultanates. For there are mentioned — with an honest generality, as historical commercial kingdoms — the Sultanate of Banjar around Banjarmasin in the south, and the Sultanate of Kutai on the Mahakam river in the east. Entities like these played the role of the organizer of the trade at the mouths of the rivers, for where the goods of the interior meet the sea, the centers of power and exchange arise.

And it is noticed that the location of each port is not arbitrary, but corresponds to a river that empties at it: for Banjarmasin at the mouth of the Barito serves the south of the region, and Samarinda on the Mahakam serves its east, and Pontianak near the Kapuas serves its west. By this each river basin came to have its natural sea outlet, and the trade was distributed over these axes instead of concentrating at a single point. And this geographic distribution is what explains why multiple sub-origins are mentioned under the single name of Kalimantan, since each port serves a different forested interior that has its own features.

And the place of Kalimantan in these networks was not isolated, but a part of a wider commercial system that connected the islands of the Indonesian archipelago with distant markets, and among them the Arab world. And we devoted to this wider path — how Indonesian oud moved across the seas to the Arabian Peninsula — the history of the oud trade between Indonesia and the Arab world, and it is the context in which Kalimantan oud falls as one of its tributaries.

The local names and the character

In Kalimantan — as in Indonesia generally — oud is called locally "gaharu," and it may be shortened in speech to "garu." And this local name is what you hear at the gathering sites and the interior markets, before it becomes "oud" in the markets of the Gulf. And knowing this name is useful for whoever wants to trace the material to its origin, since the word itself is a part of the identity of the region.

As for the character of Kalimantan oud, it is described in the market — by what is common and with reservation — as a deep, warm, woody character. And we affirm that descriptions like these are general and relative, since the character varies according to the tree and the infection and the processing, and ought not to be taken as a decisive rule. For natural oud is diverse by its nature, and the aromatic description remains an impression to be taken as a guide, not a decisive verdict.

And it is important also to realize that "Kalimantan" is a wide region, not a single point, and that within it are areas that have their features mentioned. For under the umbrella of Kalimantan oud you find sub-origins such as Pontianak oud in the west and Malinau oud in the northeast, and each of them has its place within the larger picture. And to review what we offer of this origin generally, you will find the Kalimantan oud collection a suitable starting point.

Kalimantan in the modern oud trade

Kalimantan remains today among the main origins from which Indonesian oud is mentioned in the markets, an extension of its historical role. But the modern trade is governed by considerations that were not present to the same degree in the past, and at their head the documentation and the sustainability. For oud today is a material whose trade is internationally regulated, and we explained the framework of that in the CITES convention and the regulation of the oud trade, where knowing the origin and documenting it becomes a part of the legitimate trade.

And connected to the documentation is the matter of sustainability; for the historical pressure on the wild trees pushed toward approaches more aware of preserving the resource, a transformation whose features we presented in wild and cultivated oud. And the region whose trade rests upon a living forest needs its resources to be managed in a way that guarantees their continuation for the generations, not their depletion.

And our position at Oud Treasure on Kalimantan is frank and warm: we are keen on a direct relationship with the extractors of oud and its intermediaries in the region, so that the oud arrives from the forests of Kalimantan to the assemblies of the Gulf through the shortest and clearest possible chain. For between the river that carried the gaharu to the coast in the past, and the road that carries it to us today, the origin remains one: a wood from the heart of Borneo, whose whence and how of arrival we are keen to know. And for whoever wants to place all of that in its wider context, he will find the complete picture in our comprehensive guide on the history of oud.

Read also

This article is the first of a regional series, each of which we devote to one of the origins of oud. Among the topics we are working on within the series:

• The history of Sumatran oud: the land of the aromatics on the Strait of Malacca
• The history of oud in Papua and eastern Indonesia: where the genus Gyrinops rules (sea and air transport, unlike the rivers of Kalimantan)
• The history of gaharu in Maluku: oud in the original Spice Islands
• The history of gathering oud in Sulawesi: the island of the sailors and the intermediaries
• The history of Merauke oud and its relation to the Merauke region (the far-eastern origin, a savanna environment unlike the rivers of Kalimantan)

And until the rest of the episodes of the series are issued, these live guides may be of use to you:

• The history of oud: how did it travel from the forests of Southeast Asia to the Arabian Peninsula?
• The history of the oud trade between Indonesia and the Arab world
• From wild oud to the farms: how has the oud industry changed through history?
• Why is oud subject to the CITES convention? A guide to the regulation of the oud trade
• A guide to Indonesian oud: the origins and the grades