Nabulsi soap (Arabic: صابون نابلسي, ṣābūn Nābulsi) is a type of castile soap produced only in Nablus, Palestine. An olive oil-based soap, it is made up of three primary ingredients: virgin olive oil, water, and a sodium compound. Those who make the soap are proud of its unique smell, which they see as a sign of the quality and purity of its ingredients.
Long reputed to be a fine product, Nabulsi soap has been exported across the Arab world and Europe since the 10th century. Although the number of soap factories has declined from a peak of thirty in the 19th century to only two today, efforts to preserve this important part of Palestinian and Nabulsi cultural heritage continue. According to the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Palestinian women have set aside portions of each year's olive harvest for the production of olive oil soap for well over a millennium. Traditionally, it is older women who make olive oil soap for the household, using the oil remaining from the previous year's harvest after the new harvest brings freshly pressed olive oil to the family kitchen. It is in the city of Nablus, however, that the tradition of olive oil soap-making evolved into a major industry and an art. For centuries, olive oil has been the most important product made in the villages of the Nablus region, and Nabulsi soap the most important manufactured commodity of the city. In the 14th century, Sheikh Shams al-Din al-Ansari al-Dimashqi said of Nablus and its olive oil soap production: "The city of Nablus ... was bestowed by God Almighty with the blessed olive tree. Its olive oil is carried by Bedouins to the Egyptian and Damascene lands, to the Hejaz, and the steppes ... In it a superior soap is produced and sent to the above-mentioned destinations and to the islands of the Mediterranean Sea." Sabon nabulsi was reportedly the soap of choice for Queen Elizabeth of England In the 19th century, olive-based villages in the core hill areas of Jabal Nablus were fully integrated into the networks of urban merchants causing the soap industry in the region to undergo a remarkable expansion. Some thirty soap factories in Nablus manufactured tons of soap for various regional markets, though the largest importer was Egypt and its military. By the early 20th century, Nablus was the largest soap producer in the Fertile Crescent, a region that spans present-day Egypt, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon and parts of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, south-eastern Turkey and south-westernIran. In 1907, for example, the city's factories produced 4,992 tons of Nabulsi soap, accounting for 55% of all soap production in Palestine, and 24% of all soap production in Syria and Palestine. It was the soap industry that gave Nablus its reputation as one of the most important manufacturing centers in Palestine at the time. John Bowring wrote of Nabulsi soap in the 1830s that it is, "highly esteemed in the Levant," and Muhammad Kurd Ali, a Syrian historian, wrote in the 1930s that "Nablus soap is the best and most famous soap today for it has, it seems, a quality not found in others and the secret is that it is unadulterated and well produced." An analysis of Nabulsi soap conducted by the British Mandatory authorities at the London Institute in 1934, found that the soap consisted only of natural materials and no harmful chemical materials. According to Rawan Shakaa, whose family owns one of the two Nabulsi soap factories still in operation, owners are proud of soap's purity and wonder how anyone could stand to work with and use leftover animal fat, as is common in the production of regular soaps
Made in a cube-like shape about 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) tall and 2.25 by 2.25 inches (5.7 by 5.7 cm) wide, the colour of Nabulsi soap is like that of "the page of an old book." The cubes are stamped on the top with the seal of the factory that produces it; for example, soap produced at the Al-Jamal ("Camel") family factory has a seal hammered into the top surface picturing a one-humped camel inside a circle. When individually packaged, the soap is hand-wrapped in crinkly white paper, waxy on one side and papery on the other and imprinted with the factory's seal. The smell of Nabulsi soap is distinctive, although it is not perfumed. pictures:
you can see more photos about soap in my album: soap industry in Nablus
