SACRED GREEN HOJARI - Highest grade B. Sacra / Frankincense / Oliban from Oman

 The quality of this 'sacred green' resin is the rarer of all, and the most operative for spiritual uses: prayer, sacred rituals,  contemplation, purification of space. It is also locally considered as a the best of medicinal grades.

 Frankincense has been turning heads since the Antiquity, it was burnt on a grand scale for sacred rituals from Arabia to Mesopotamia to Ancient Rome and much beyond.

It extravagant price turned the ancient world crazy, and many empires tried to reach the source of the holy plant (Pharaonic Egypt, Romans, ...) without success, so arduous was the road, and so misleading were the information, designed to protect the best kept secret of Arabia by creating fear with mythological dangers,  blurring the actual geography with invented unreachable destinations and so on. We  know now that the precious resin they were after (B. sacra & B. carterii) grows in Oman, Yemen and the horn of Africa (and some other varieties elsewhere) 

The most refined and sought after of the frankincense family, Boswellia sacra, grows in Oman, where this resin was sourced. 

This resin is what is nowadays referred to as "sultan grade", the best of qualities. Pure, deep green pieces are considered the crème de la crème and have to be hand selected out of the larger harvests in which the various grades and colors are sorted. Local sources estimate that roughly 10kg of green nuggets is found and collected for every 1 ton of resin harvested. For every 10kg of green nuggets, the higher 1kg are selected as the highest quality (little extraneous material, color etc) . That means 1kg of the present requires 1 ton of resin to sift through, hence the rarity, and the price.

With time, the green color of the fresh resin tears turns into a deep golden citrine.

The resin comes form the higher parts of the Qara mountains, the highest part of the Nejd, that is the only region to give the real Hojari quality (locally known as Hajar, form the name of the rocky terrain). Such trees are not affected by the high humidity, fog, and monsoon season that affect the lower areas, the Qara foothills or the coastal region, thus their resin is of vastly superior quality. 

 Omani B. sacra frankincense if considered the most desirable on the global market (compared to frankincense from other origins, or other subspecies)

Wild sustainable harvest by hand.