The word “perfume” arrived in Portuguese through the French “parfum,” taken from the Italian “profumo,” derived from the Latin “per fumum,” meaning “through smoke” or “via smoke,” in the sense of “vapor that expands.”

In the 8th century, Muslims sailed from North Africa and took control of what is now Portugal and Spain. Known in Arabic as al-Andalus, the region joined the expanding Umayyad Empire and prospered under Muslim rule. It should not be too surprising that Arabic influences were part of the Portuguese culture, and the people’s identity.