Paper short abstract:

This paper attends to the use of fragrance among Muslims in the Russian Urals. By appealing to their senses, fragrance contributes to the production of place and space and helps to manifest a reality radically different from perceptions prevalent in Russian mainstream society.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is devoted to the study of fragrance (misk or attar) in Muslim communities in the Russian Federation. Fragrance is being professionally sold at booths during festive events or expositions and can constitute a small business for young Muslims offering it to costumers after the Friday prayer. Also during suhbat ceremonies with the Sufi master (a mystical technique involving dialogue), small bottles of misk might be circulating.

Drawing upon empirical material collected in the Urals region of Russia since 2015, the paper is informed by the idea that material objects hold a formative and transformative potential to shape and create space and place. Instead of looking into the production, distribution, sale or advertising of misk, I will enquire how it affects users by appealing to their senses. When misk and other objects come into play as part of contemplative techniques and pilgrimage practices, they can help to expand the confined limits of Western conceptualisations of time and space and thus radically rupture the boundaries of a shared perception. Depending upon the people in question, the "other world" becomes manifest to varying degrees. Muslims may suddenly realise themselves as suspended in animate space, looking out into a personalised universe, where interactions between humans and not-altogether-humans take place and where we can no longer clearly differentiate between the here and now and the hereafter.