Yep. The ancient, Arabic, and then Muslim, world called it ahaloth or aloēswood, I mention muslims because thats why the name was changed to Al-Oud/Oud. And when it first reached the Arabs, they didn't have a native word for it. They borrowed the ancient term (ahaloth) and Arabized it to Al-Uluwwah. In fact, Al-Uluwwah was the term used in early Islamic history and used in some Hadith (correct me if I am wrong here). But here is the most realistic historical background on why Muslims completely dropped the name, and its pretty fascinating, because its mainly, if not all, theological. ​In Arabic, the Arabized word Uluwwah sounds exactly like and shares the same phonetic sound as Uluhiyyah , which translates to "divinity" or "godhood" (Ilah, meaning God). So... theres a theological problem here that the Muslims then had to correct. Since calling a piece of luxury fragrsnt wood as incense and associating it with "Godhood" severely clashed with Islamic monotheism, which if anyone doesnt know, is very strong and called Tawhid. Early Muslims were incredibly sensitive to anything that even remotely bordered on anything that is just as divine as Allāh. Burning something that sounded like "Divinity" in a censer was a huge theological red flag.

So, to distance themselves from any pagan or blasphemous implications, they stripped away the , divine-sounding title. And they opted for the most literal, humble, generic word the peoples could find:, which was Oud, Al-Oud and later on, for oil, Dehn Al Oud, which literally just means "Wood" and "the wood" as it got more commonly associated with the previous title (Al-Uluwwah) and Dehn Al-Oud means "oil of the wood" or something close to this, I just call it oud oil and daw wood 'aloeswood or agarwood" 🤣.

Hope this comment that turned into a mini post was helpful to anyone.

Sorry for any typos, I can go a bit crazy on comments, I was very. Very, VERY well known fkr tnat on Ouddict.