Olive Oil Soap Factories

Nablus has been producing olive oil soap for over 250 years, and a small number of factories in the old city continue the tradition. The soap is made from local olive oil, water, and caustic soda — no synthetic ingredients, no perfume — and is prized throughout the Arab world for its purity and mild effect on skin. The old city's soap sellers are among the most distinctive stops in the market.

Some soap factories can be visited when production is underway (typically winter and spring, after the olive harvest). The process is simple but dramatic at scale: vats of liquid soap are poured onto large stone floors, left to solidify, then cut into bars and stacked in towers that can be three metres high and left to cure for months. If you are in Nablus and pass a doorway that smells of fresh olive oil, it is worth knocking.

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A story
Nablus soap — hard, pale, and made from local olive oil — was traded across the Ottoman world and exported to Egypt, Europe, and beyond. The soap was pressed into molds, stacked in conical towers to dry for months, then shipped. At its peak the city had over thirty factories; fewer than a handful remain, but they still use the same basic process.