Mori
Mori is a wood-type name used in Gulf and South Asian trade for a category of agarwood. The general referent can be stated: it names material of the kind that sellers using this family of names sell and describe, listed alongside terms such as Hindi Muri and Salla. What the name attributes — a provenance, a treatment, a quality tier — is settled locally and varies between sellers, and it is not established here that any neighbouring spelling is a variant of it.
Spelling, language and market
The name is written in Latin script in invoices, listings and warehouse notes, as Mori, mori or MORI. No trade body fixes an orthography for it, and the Gulf usage carries the same letters in Arabic script. Transliteration is not a fixed procedure, so a written form is evidence of the writer rather than of the material. The vocabulary it belongs to circulates between South Asian suppliers and Gulf buyers.
Attested usage
In use, the name appears in lists of wood types and in short descriptions of chips, dust and blocks offered for sale. Sellers commonly qualify it — by collection point, by whether the material was wild or cultivated, or by what it is intended for — so the bare word rarely travels alone in a serious transaction. The general referent is clear enough to state: a category of agarwood wood as named by sellers who use this vocabulary. The fine attribution is not. Where the name is the only description on a quotation, ask the counterparty what it means in that lot.
Named examples and neighbouring spellings
The same usage records the qualified forms Mini Muri and Ball Muri, and the separately recorded name Hindi Muri. Whether the qualified forms are subdivisions of Mori, selling names for the same material, or labels borrowed from elsewhere in the trade is not established here. What would settle it is documentary and ordinary: the same supplier’s own wording on two invoices, or a written definition from the counterparty at the point of quotation. Until one of those exists, each lot is described on its own terms.
Alternative meanings
Outside the trade the same letters are common as a surname and as a given name in South Asian usage, and unrelated words are written the same way in other languages. A listing that carries a name and a name alone can be read in several ways, and the buyer should not assume the trade sense is the one intended. There is also the risk of over-reading a short word: in commerce generally a one-word label may denote a form, a treatment or a part rather than a category.
What it does not prove
The name does not establish the species of the wood, its resin content, its oil yield, its age, its size or form, or the place it grew. It does not establish a grade, and it is not a protected designation: nothing prevents its use for material from another origin. And it does not establish that Mini Muri, Ball Muri or Hindi Muri are the same material or different materials. Where the distinction would change what is being bought, the question belongs to the counterparty.
This entry gives the general trade referent of the term and the spellings recorded in the same usage. It does not establish the species, grading, composition, origin or quality of any material described with it, and it does not establish that the neighbouring spellings are variants of it.
- Biodiversity and application prospects of fungal endophytes in the agarwood-producing genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops (Thymelaeaceae): a reviewStates that all members of the agarwood-producing genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops are placed in CITES Appendix II. Records 92 compounds identified in agarwood, of which terpenoids are 40.22%, and names eighteen fungal genera reported to promote agarwood formation. It does not establish the quality, yield or age of any material, and it is a review rather than a regulatory instrument.
- Agarwood: A reviewStates that CITES Appendix II covers all species of Aquilaria and Gyrinops, and reports fifteen Aquilaria species distributed across the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, from Pakistan and India through southern China into Southeast Asia. It does not establish the legal status of any individual shipment in any particular jurisdiction.
- ITTO — CITES COP examines agarwoodEstablishes that all species of Aquilaria and Gyrinops have been listed in CITES Appendix II since 2004, and that the listing followed unsustainable extraction. Establishes that the report reviews wild and planted agarwood resources, processing technologies, products and regulatory practices, and that cultivation and inoculation of agarwood species are described as relieving pressure on wild populations in natural forests. It does not state what an Appendix II listing requires for trade, and it does not establish the origin, age or quality of any material.
OudGuide editorial review · 2026-10-20
Reviewed against the cited sources for the general referent of the term, and checked for a question-specific answer. The precise attribution was checked against general trade usage rather than against a single market, and each entry states which parts are local rather than general.