Sheikh Abdul Samad Al Qurashi Blend
Abdul Samad Al Qurashi

Sheikh Abdul Samad Al Qurashi Blend is actually an austere "kind of ritual" moldy aroma more than properly an "accomplished" structural veritable fragrance. Is important to nail down this truth, we cannot get round this fact in its substance, a potion (yet marvellously natural) not always steps on the status of articulated fragrance. You should appreciate this type of potion if completely focused over the seasoned-aged affair. This is an almost unwearable fragrance, a stuff decidedly esoteric in its smoked animalic ancestral substance. Unfortunately I don't get a satisfactory level of "artisanal" structure, no floral molecules and an almost absent evolution. On the contrary the general aroma is stout, profound, doping and almost hypnotic, a scent of bonfire and dark seasoned woods. Not enough to root down a real masterwork of perfumery, in any case. The combination of aged (hyper natural) agarwood oil, black musk, leather and wild ambergris (despite well balanced) exhales an ancestral fume overly gloomy, stable, dirty and smoky. I get the "smoked-fur" effect on my skin, obscure woodiness, dark (pleasantly smoother along the way) resins, warm saltiness and almost no more. Ambergris is the element of real interest with its salty-spicy-aromatic warmth. I get the stale aroma of antique leather and mustiness coming from an old wooden store hidden somewhere down a basement or a cellar. Finally I ideally visualize on my visionary mind just prehistoric caves, burning fires, primordial men minimally covered by bear's furs and dry animalic leather. I've heard the wolves howling there in the obscure forest, a dark moon is the phantasm of my agony.
P.S: gradually, along the dry down, the smell becomes more and more rubbery (gummy-leathery), like a sort of darker and smokier Santa Maria Novella Nostalgia.

This is pretty much all oud and nothing but the oud, so help me God. It screams raw, masculine power as effectively as Burt Reynold's hairy chest. It's all man. Forgive me, but as a woman, I prefer to get some flowers with my oud, or at least some amber or musk. I need some sweet nothings whispered in my ear to make the medicine to go down. So, this right here is too much raw power for me. I am not disputing its excellence, just that it is definitely not for me.

I smell: very aged oud, rotting wood, primordial ooze, wet earth, bears in mating season, and the tears of the hundred lesser men you just stepped on.

I would recommend this to someone who needs to smell as objectionably male as he can, someone who needs to project a certain image of power and dominance in the world - like a weedy accountant who's been handed the job of walking onto a half-finished construction site and telling 500 sweaty, muscly contractors that they've been laid off without severance. Wearing this would pretty much give that guy the metaphorical balls to do something like that. Because if you smell something like Sheikh Samad Al Qurashi Blend on someone, you instinctively take a step back and bow down to the sheer confidence it must take to pull something like this off.

Sheikh is an almost pure-oud offering from Abdul Samad Al Qurashi, which features this natural woody marvel in a more shady, raw, straightforward and animalic way than other oud-based blends that I have tried so far from this brand, which were somehow elaborated in a more "wearable", friendly and refined way. The opening is quite bold and pungent, not cloying but remarkably moldy and indolic, rich in the usual fascinating nuances of our beloved "rotting agar wood" note: a balsamic breeze, the warmth of amber, a slight sweet roundness, and then stale notes, salt, herbs... I also detect an amber gris note here, with its peculiar sort of animalic-camphoraceous saltiness. Overall the smell here is decidedly exotic, savage, growling, ghastly and mysterious: the smell of a pure deep wood forest with its shades and threats (or, if you want to take away all the charme, the stink of uncle John's abandoned barn). Initially fecal and raw, sure, but that is part of its marvel, as that is only the door to a world of facets and nuances (and however it's at no point "sickening" or discomforting, like many synthetic aromachemicals can be instead). Whereas other ASAQ blends like Royal or Jewel are considerably more "civilized", polished, humanised by elegant and gentler notes, here there's no room for fancy delicacies: rather it's all about Stevensonian echoes of deep nature, uncontaminated cults, animals, exotic rituals (and other clichés, I am terribly sorry for my lack of narrative taste). Still this does not imply Sheikh ASAQ is not equally elegant if compared to other more complex blends from this line: it is, just in a different and perhaps more selective, challenging way. It's all about being tasteful and self-confident enough to wear this - bearing in mind it is also meant to be layered, that is something which, again, requires taste and knowledge enough: a positive way for a perfume to act "selective", unlike the pointless elitism based on cost... Anyway, as hours pass Sheikh does not lose a gram of power, it becomes increasingly drier and woodier to the point it reaches a true, austere smell of an antique wood closet, with no other aroma except the pure, moldy, stale smell of aged wood. An imaginative, evocative scent, for sure, gloomy and hieratic, fascinating and somehow off-putting and unfriendly – in a charming way, the charme of savage creatures. So far among the ASAQ oils I've tested, Sheik is probably the best one for layering purposes, as it smells less complex than others - or at least, it's more centered on oud, offering a broader variety of possibilities of layering. The quality is outstanding as usual, so if you want to experience what real swearword smells like and want to discover it and play with it, you're in for a treat.

8/10

I find Sheikh ASAQ to be very similar to Al Nokhba but the oud in this blend is much more intense and the rose, although prominent, is not as big. Structurally it seems to be very much the same as Al Nokhba but with different proportions of ingredients - the oud is stronger, the rose is there but not as loud, the amber is dialed back, and the spices very low-key perhaps giving the oud more freedom to roam. In a way, I want to say Al Nokhba is the feminine version and Sheikh ASAQ a masculine blend, but they are both easily worn by either gender. One just has a touch more floral and a touch less oud. But both are incredibly good. I suspect the type of oud used in each is different, though, and while I like the construction of Al Nokhba better, the oud qualities in Sheikh ASAQ are superior!