Scent, Science and Guidance

That the Prophet PBUH’s sweat scent like the most fragrant oil, this can be believed with faith, but can also be understood through science.

With faith, you can go through the following authentic hadith: From Anas bin Malik, “The Prophet SAW visited our house one day. Then he fell asleep (qailulah) in our house until his body sweated. Then my mother took the bottle and put the Prophet’s sweat into it. Suddenly the Messenger of Allah woke up and asked my mother, “O Umu Sulaim, what have you done to me?” My mother replied, “We only take your sweat, O Messenger of Allah, for us to make perfume for us.” His sweat is one of the most fragrant perfumes “(HR. Muslim).

Meanwhile, with science, it can be understood as follows: perfume at that time was not like today’s perfume, which mostly uses alcohol as a carrier.

At that time the carrier of perfume was vegetable oil such as olive, etc. This carrier is not only to dilute the concentration of essential oil (EO) so that it does not harm the skin, it also functions to make EO which is also called volatile oil — no longer volatile, because it is ‘bound’ by vegetable oils.

Certain vegetable oils such as olive, or tamanu oil in our case— are very easily accepted and absorbed by our bodies. Even more so when applied to the points such as the inner wrist, neck etc. then this fragrant oil is absorbed through the skin and spreads throughout the body. If there is enough of this fragrance, then it will then come out again when we sweat, that is the process of how sweat can scent good. Because the Prophet was the most fragrant among his companions — he used a lot of perfumed oil, so his sweat became fragrant.

This process cannot happen if you use modern perfumes which generally use alcohol as a carrier. Because the alcohol will evaporate immediately and along with the evaporation carry away the moisture from your skin, the skin becomes dry and the sweat can’t smell good. When the perfume runs out, the smell of sweat comes back.

Due to the process mentioned above, classic perfumes with vegetable oil carriers have one drawback, namely that they are easy to lose their aroma because they are absorbed with the carrier oil into our skin. But this weakness is easy to overcome, that is, in addition to applying it on the pulse points, it is also applied to the most oily parts of our body — for example in our upper earlobe — so it will last a long time for you to scent good.

With a combination of application on the pulse points and the earlobe, or if you want it can also be on the clothes or items you carry, the fragrance will emerge from inside and outside of your body.