Rooh Afza is more than a summer drink—it is a shared memory of the Indian subcontinent. Born in the bustling lanes of Old Delhi in 1907, this ruby-red syrup was created by Hakim Abdul Majid to combat the harsh northern summer. Over the next century, it survived Partition, migration, wars, and cha…
Shared cultural memory is the collective remembering of a community passed across generations. It is in the rhythms of your everyday that make you who you are. If you could pour it into a glass, it would look something like this. Can you smell it? Ru absa. The replenisher of the ru the soul. Part herbs, part sugar, part memory. Ruavza is a story of the subcontinent. It is a story of the north Indian summer and it is a story of Delhi. Around 1907 when Delhi was still under British rule, a young Hakim in the bananes of the old city, Hakeim Abdul Majjid was portion making in his dawakana named Hamdard. He wanted to prepare a portion that could tackle the summer ailments of the northern plains. Dehydration, fatigue, heat strokes, your typical diliki gmi. His experiments with flowers, fruits and herbs gave birth to Ruabza. The ruby colored concoction with a mesmerizing fragrance was an instant success with the visitors of the Hamdar Davakana and there was no looking back. production center. medicine patent medicines introduced or popular actually establish space. Standard recipe. tip medicine patented medic or standardization. As Ruva's manufacturing expanded with growing popularity, the young Hakeim took it upon himself to get the label designed. In 1910, an artist Mirzanur Ahmed was tasked with crafting a colorful illustration which was then sent to Bombay to be printed at the Bolton press run by the Paris. Over the century, barring a few minor changes, the label's design has largely remained true to Miranor's original drawing. The bottles, however, have evolved from iconic glass to commercial pet. Now the young Hakim Abdul Majjid was not fated to live long. He died in the 1920s as Hamad was still finding its feet. Leaving behind a wife, children and an unfinished legacy. His widow Rabia Beum quietly took over and made the decision to declare Hamard a wak and Islamic charitable trust in which the profits would largely go towards public welfare. Then came partition 1947. Independence arrived at a cost. The subcontinent was split. So were families including Rabyas. Of her two surviving sons. The older one Hakim Abdul Hamid chose to stay in Delhi while the younger son Hakim Mouhammad Sahed moved to the newly formed Pakistan. or 71 Bangladesh manag Bangladesh establishment Hindustan. Now wearing three different nationalities, the Ruby syrup remains mostly the same and so does its design layout. Ruabza is described as Mashru Mashri, the summer drink of the east. An advertising copy said to have written by Hakeim Sed himself. Mashu Mashri, it remains a summer drink and a summer memory that much like the summer itself stretches across the Bis caring little for borders. dentist. Memories. any gathering especially in the summer months. These memories are now bottled in modernday factories. Their fragrance at once familiar and mesmerizing. more or less the composition has remained the same for the last 120 years. The first um the syrup is made. So this is sugar and water being mixed together to make a syrup out of it. Um and then we mix a lot of ingredients into it. There are uh there is um there is lemon herbs which are distilled. The ark is is taken out and then the ark is put into that syrup. Uh then we've got juices uh into that uh pineapple juice, orange juice that goes into the making of ruabza. And there are various other uh permitted approved coloring and and uh essences and um flavorings that go into ruabza. A lot of these are natural. I mean 90 90 99% of rua is natural. So uh so yeah all that mix uh goes together and then it's it's matured and then then uh it's it's more of a distillate uh rather than anything else. Yeah. So out so all these 11 ingredients they are yunani uh ingredients they are they are herbal ingredients uh and and as I told you that the the uh init initiation of the concept of ruabza also was uh as a medicine um packaging of ruabza is done where the syrup comes from top and into that hopper and then it is filled into separate bottles all volutric. So 750 ml into one bottle. The magazine of the label over there. Uh and each flap is picking up one label and then going into and then transferring it into each bottle over there. So it's it's a two-step process. One the the flap is picking up the label and then slapping it onto the bottle. So that was the original name of the trust Hamdahana. Then it changed to Hamd Laboratories. Now where we are into separate trust HD foods India that's again a trust. Nilopur, Dha, Hus, Gulab, Kasni, Shadila, Raab, Podina, Sundal, Tafair, Gajger, Monaka and Kyoda. So yeah, all these form the distillate. Approximately 21 uh 21 batches in a day. Uh and each batch is approximately uh 11,400 bottles um per batch. So that's approximately 2 lakh 40,000 in a day is what we are manufacturing as of now. Very similar production or around two lakh production in Orangabad as well. So we roughly around 4 lakh 40,000 4 lakh 50,000 bottle per day manufacturing the whole of India. It's bread and bucket to Hamdas actually it's our biggest product. We we serve the society as well. This is the from from the pro the profits of this product is what we are able to give back to society in terms of healthcare facilities in terms of education. Ruabza sales being channeled into education and healthcare embodies the spirit with which Rabia Beum had first declared Hamar as Vak. The idea of charity being a cornerstone value in Islam. philosophy of the product. The philosophy of the organization which is manufacturing that product uh which is a taxexempt organization. It's a trust um and uh according to the law 85% of its profits uh go into charity. Uh the charity which we are doing are into uh three main uh areas. Uh one is healthcare, education and skill development. uh and this is irrespective of any cast creed um uh where we would like to give benefit uh of this to uh to the people to the general public. It is now a product which is manufactured in all three countries India, Pakistan and and Bangladesh. uh and uh it is a product of the subcontinent uh where everyone is enjoying its benefits although started off in India in Delhi for over a century now carrying fragrance memory and public welfare long after the glass is empty the poet Silvi wrote Foreign
Companion article
In 1907, in the old city of Delhi, a young Unani physician named Hakim Abdul Majeed was mixing potions in a small dawakhana, or dispensary, that he had named Hamdard. His aim was practical rather than commercial: the north Indian summer brought with it a predictable list of ailments — dehydration, fatigue, heatstroke, the everyday miseries of Dilli ki garmi — and he wanted a remedy his patients could actually enjoy taking. His experiments with flowers, fruits and herbs produced a ruby-coloured, intensely fragrant syrup. He called it Rooh Afza, "the refresher of the soul." It was an immediate hit with visitors to his dispensary, and demand grew quickly enough that, by 1910, he commissioned an artist, Mirza Noor Ahmed, to design a label for it, which was sent to be printed in Bombay. More than a century on, and after the bottle has changed from glass to plastic, that label's design has barely changed.
Abdul Majeed did not live to see Hamdard grow into an institution. He died in the 1920s, while the dispensary was still finding its footing, leaving behind his widow, Rabia Begum, and their children. Rather than sell the business or run it privately for the family's benefit, Rabia Begum made a decision that would define Hamdard for the next century: she declared it a waqf, an Islamic charitable trust, under which the bulk of its profits would be directed toward public welfare rather than kept as private wealth. It was a choice rooted in the idea, central to Islamic tradition, that charity is not an act of occasional generosity but a structural obligation on wealth itself.
That structure was tested by history almost immediately. When India was partitioned in 1947, Rabia Begum's family, like millions of others, was split by the new border. Of her two surviving sons, the elder, Hakim Abdul Hamid, stayed on in Delhi to run Hamdard there, while the younger, Hakim Mohammad Said, moved to the newly created Pakistan and built a second Hamdard from scratch. After Bangladesh's independence in 1971, a third, separate Hamdard trust took shape there as well. The result is unusual for any consumer brand: three legally distinct charitable trusts, operating under three different nationalities, each still selling a syrup that is recognisably the same drink, in a bottle that still carries a version of the same 1910 label. The company itself leans into this: its advertising has long described Rooh Afza as "Mashroob-e-Mashriq," the drink of the East — copy that Hakim Mohammad Said is said to have written himself — framing it as a shared regional memory that, unlike the people who first sold it, was never really divided by the border.
The manufacturing process, according to a Hamdard production official, has changed little in principle over 120 years, even as the scale has grown enormous. It starts with a base syrup of sugar and water, into which distilled extracts, or "arks," of herbs and flowers are mixed, along with fruit juices such as pineapple and orange, and approved natural colourings and flavourings. Roughly eleven Unani herbal ingredients go into the distillate — among them rose, mint, sandalwood, khus and carrot seed — reflecting Rooh Afza's origins as a medicinal preparation rather than a soft drink. The official put the finished product at roughly 90 to 99 percent natural. On the factory floor, the syrup is filled by volume, 750 millilitres to a bottle, with an automated arm picking up a label and pressing it onto each bottle as it passes. Hamdard's Delhi facility alone runs around 21 batches a day, at roughly 11,400 bottles per batch — about 240,000 bottles daily — with a comparable output from its Aurangabad plant, putting combined production in India at somewhere around 440,000 to 450,000 bottles a day. "It's bread and butter to Hamdard," the official said. "Actually, it's our biggest product."
The company that grew out of Rabia Begum's original decision is now formally structured as a tax-exempt trust — its Indian operations run today through an entity called HD Foods India, itself a trust — and Indian law requires that 85 percent of a waqf's profits be spent on charitable purposes. Hamdard channels that money into three areas: healthcare, education and skill development, offered, as a company representative put it, "irrespective of any caste or creed." What began as one physician's attempt to get Delhi through the summer is now a drink manufactured in three countries and, on its maker's own account, a permanent source of funding for hospitals and schools across the subcontinent — a business whose bottom line was, from its very first years, deliberately tied to the public good rather than kept apart from it.
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