The Roman Empire collapsed at the end of the 5th century, plunging Europe into the Dark Ages. The Byzantine Empire continued to preserve language, science and culture for almost the next 900 years until the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453.

Medicine, alchemy and botany were not lost with the demise of the Greek and Roman civilisations, the Arabs intensively studied and translated the most important works of the recently collapsed civilisations into Arabic and soon a new generation of scientists was born. The Arabs developed the knowledge they had inherited and rapidly spread the knowledge across the Mediterranean and further connecting all lands between modern Morocco and Turkestan.

The Arabs adopted and improved the processes of wet and dry distillation and distillation of balsams and musk. They introduced filtering and accurate measurement of quantities using scales and invented solid soap.

With the Persians, Arabs introduced trade links between China, Indonesia, India and Ethiopia with the Mediterranean countries. They learned the Hindu numeric system, manufacture of paper, the magnetic compass and paper money from their new trading partners. They used and passed these innovations on to their other trading partners.

Arab and Persian traders travelled the Silk Road to China, Indonesia, Central Asia and India using camel trains to cross the deserts to bring precious cargoes of mace, nutmeg, gignger, pepper, agarwood, gum mastic, cinnamon, cloves, civet, umbergris, cassia, sandalwood, saffron, jasmine and cumin back to the Mediterranean lands.

The Arabs favoured rose and musk aromatics, even mixing musk with the mortar, which coated the outside walls of their buildings so that the aroma of musk was released when sun heated them.

The rose was most appreciated by the Arabs for its beauty and fragrance. It was the first flower to be distilled and refined to produce attar of rose. Attar of rose is the result of rose petal distillation - oil and the rosewater. It was mainly produced in Syria and Southern Iran and then exported to China and India via The Silk Route.

Attar of rose was used to flavour food, sprinkle on guests and scent gloves in the Arabic cultures. The scent gloves were admired and coveted by everyone and the Arabs mastered their production beyond perfection.

The rose was introduced to Bulgaria by a Turkish merchant, that country has since become the world's largest producer of high quality roses - Rosa Damascena, and remains the leading produce today.

To be continued...