Palestine · Food / Tobacco / Drink Processing (aromatic/cosmetic craft)

Nablus Touqan Barilla-Ash Olive Oil Soap Making

Sabun Nabulsi (Nabulsi soap); qilw (also qily, the natural alkaline soda powder made from barilla-plant ash, from which the English word 'alkaline' derives); sheed (lime, combined with qilw in the soda solution)

The production of hard, ivory-colored, virtually scentless olive oil soap in the city of Nablus, a fertile region watered by natural springs that has served as a base for soap production for more than a thousand years, acclaimed globally since the tenth century for its quality and purity, with just three primary ingredients: virgin olive oil, water, and an alkaline sodium compound. Before the introduction of caustic soda in the 1860s, the sodium compound was produced from the ash of barilla, a plant growing abundantly on the salty banks of the Jordan River; large numbers of Bedouins from the Beni Sakhr, Huwaytat, and Adwan tribes gathered barilla from valleys around Ma'an, particularly near Salt and Tadmur (Palmyra), stacking the plant in towering piles during summer, burning it, and gathering the resulting ashes and coals into sacks for transport by caravan to Nablus, where they were pounded into a fine natural alkaline powder called qilw -- the direct linguistic root of the English word 'alkaline.' Qilw is still used today in combination with lime (sheed) to form the soda solution: barilla ashes are pounded into powder, mixed with locally sourced lime, and covered with hot water drawn from copper vats; the resulting concentrated alkaline solution is returned to the vats with regionally produced olive oil, a process repeated as many as forty times over the course of a week while the mixture is continuously stirred, allowing the oil to fully absorb the alkaline compounds. Trade with Bedouins was indispensable to the industry, since they alone could furnish the qilw the process required. By the fourteenth century, a significant soap-making industry had developed in Nablus, reputedly prized by Queen Elizabeth I of England, and exported throughout the Middle East and Europe; nineteenth-century integration of olive-producing hill villages into urban merchant networks drove remarkable expansion, with some thirty soap factories manufacturing tons of soap for regional markets, Egypt and its military the largest importer. By the early twentieth century, Nablus had become the largest soap producer in the entire Fertile Crescent; in 1907 alone, the city's factories produced 4,992 tons of Nabulsi soap, accounting for 55 percent of all soap production in Palestine and 24 percent of all soap production across Syria and Palestine combined. Of the roughly 40 factories operating at the turn of the twentieth century, only three remain today, including the Touqan factory, where soap-making families continue to guard their specific recipes zealously while following the same basic premise that has defined the craft throughout its history.

Risk level: Critically Endangered · Inscribed December 2024 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, as Nabulsi soap-making (saboon nabulsi)