Umar b. al-Khattâb — God be pleased with him — said, ‘If I were a merchant, I would choose to deal in perfume; if I cannot make a profit out of it, I still have its sweet smell!”

Quoted by Ibn al-Mujâwir in his early 13th century travel text, translated by G. Rex Smith, A Traveler in Thirteenth-Century Arabia: Ibn al-Mujâwir’s Târîkh al-Mustabsir (London: The Hakluyt Society, 2008), p. 111.