Soap Redux

Pictured Laurel[*] | Defne Soap from Turkey.

[*] Aleppo soap (also known as savon d'Alep, laurel soap, Syrian soap, or ghar soap, the Syrian word for 'laurel') is a handmade, hard bar soap. Aleppo soap is classified as a Castile soap as it is a hard soap made from olive oil and lye, from which it is distinguished by the inclusion of laurel oil. 

Mavi Boncuk | 

Sabun[1]  EN Soap[2] : from AR abūn صبون  Aramaic ṣabūn צבונא Latin sapo, sapon, GER saipō IndoEuropean soib-on-  squishy (mud, butter, dough, etc.); slushy (snow). FR savon, GER seife  from Latin. Tacitus (MS 56-120) gives a Germanic origin. See also: Arap Sabunu  [3]

Aleppo soap is a handmade, hard bar soap. Aleppo soap is also known as savon d'Alep, laurel soap, or ghar soap (laurel is known as ghar in Syria).

It is commonly thought that the process of soap-making emanated from the Levant region [1] (of which Aleppo is a main city) and to have moved west from there to Europe after the first crusades based on the claim that the earliest soap made in Europe was just after the crusades, but in fact the Romans in the first century AD knew about soap and Zosimos of Panopolis ca. 300 AD described soap and soap making. Unlike most soaps, Aleppo soap will float in water.

The Arabs made soap from vegetable oil such as olive oil and some aromatic oils such as thyme oil. Lye (Al-Soda Al-Kawia) was used for the first time. From the beginning of the 7th century, soap was produced in Nablus (West Bank,Palestine), Kufa (Iraq) and Basra (Iraq). Soaps, as we know them today, are descendants of historical Arabian Soaps. Arabian Soap was perfumed and colored, some of the soaps were liquid and others were hard. Historically, soap was made by mixing animal fats with lye. Because of the caustic lye, this was a dangerous procedure which could result in serious chemical burns or even blindness. Before commercially-produced lye (sodium hydroxide) was commonplace, potash, potassium hydroxide, was produced at home for soap making from the ashes of a hardwood fire.

The origins of Castile Soap can be traced back to The Levant where Aleppo soap makers have been making olive and laurel oil based hard soaps for millennia.

It is commonly believed that the Crusaders brought Aleppo soap back to Europe with them in the 11th century. Following the Crusades, production of this soap was extended to the whole Mediterranean area. The first European soap-making factories were created in the 12th century in Spain (Alicante, Malaga, Carthagene and Castile) and in Italy (Naples, Savone, Genoa, Bologna and Venice) and then, in the middle of the 15th century, in Marseille France, giving birth to Marseille soap or Savon de Marseille is a traditional soap made from vegetable oils that has been made around Marseille, France, for about 600 years, the first documented soap maker in the area being recorded in about 1370.

However, early soap makers in Europe did not have easy access to laurel oil and therefore dropped it from their formulations thereby creating an olive oil soap now known as Castile soap and is similar to Nabulsi soap (Arabic: صابون نابلسي‎, ṣābūn Nābulsi) produced only in Nablus in the West Bank, Palestine.

[1] [The Sumerians] used a slurry of ashes and water to remove grease from raw wool and cloth so that it could be dyed. Sumerian priests and temple attendants purified themselves before sacred rites, and in the absence of soap, they too probably used ashes and water.

The slippery solutions clean because the alkali reacts with some of the grease on an object and converts it into soap. The soap then dissolves the rest of the dirt and grease. The more grease and oil dissolved by the alkaline solution, the more soap there is and the better the mixture cleans.

People would inevitably notice this because they used the slippery solutions repeatedly until the solutions lost their potency. Thus, the Sumerians, realising that a little grease improved the performance of the alkali, proceeded to make soap solutions directly by boiling fats and oils in the alkali before using it for cleaning. Specific directions for making different kinds of soap solution have been found on cuneiform tablets.’


- H. W. Salzberg, From Caveman to Chemist, American Chemical Society, Washington DC, 1991

Soaps were not to be found in early Ancient Roman baths; even Cleopatra was confined to essential oils and fine white sand (as an abrasive) for cleansing.

Ancient Roman legend has it that the word ‘soap’ is derived from Mount Sapo, where animals were sacrificed, and from where rainwater washed a mixture of melted animal fats (tallow, a foul-smelling substance also used to make candles) and wood ashes into the River Tiber below. There, the soapy mixture was found to be useful for washing clothing and skin.

By contrast, Pliny the Elder, whose writings chronicle life in the First Century AD, describes soap as ‘an invention of the Gauls for giving a reddish tint to the hair’. He even gives recipes for making soap, indicating that it was used ‘to disperse scrofulous sores’. It’s difficult to imagine the smell and discomfort associated with its early use.

By the 13th century, soap making in Britain became centred in large towns like Bristol, Coventry and London, with each making its own variety. Large areas of British woodland were destroyed to meet the growing demand for wood ashes, causing a country-wide shortage of winter fuel. Italy, Spain and France also became early soap-producing centres.

Plentiful supplies of high quality olive oil and barilla ashes (from which they made their alkali) made regions like Castile in Spain and Marseilles in France renowned for the quality of the soap they produced. The method used throughout the Middle Ages and up to the 17th century consisted of boiling olive oil (in Mediterranean countries) or animal fats (in Northern Europe) with an extract of plant ashes and lime.

In the 16th century, three broad varieties of soap were available: coarse soap made from train oil (extracted from whale blubber), sweet soap from olive oil and speckled soap from tallow. For a while, the making of speckled soap was forbidden, not simply because it smelt so bad but because its manufacture would deplete the nation’s tallow reserves, thereby driving up the cost of candles beyond the reach of the poor.


As a result, soap was heavily taxed and became a luxury item only readily available to the rich. Eventually, market forces virtually eliminated sweet and speckled soaps, despite the difficulty of making an odourless coarse soap. Understandably, it wasn’t long before perfumed soaps were introduced from Italy.  SOURCE

[2] soap (n.) Old English sape "soap, salve" (originally a reddish hair dye used by Germanic warriors to give a frightening appearance), from Proto-Germanic *saipon "dripping thing, resin" (cognates: Middle Low German sepe, West Frisian sjippe, Dutch zeep, Old High German seiffa, German seife "soap," Old High German seifar "foam," Old English sipian "to drip"), from PIE *soi-bon-, from root *seib- "to pour out, drip, trickle" (cognates: Latin sebum "tallow, suet, grease"). Romans and Greeks used oil to clean skin; the Romance language words for "soap" (cognates: Italian sapone, French savon, Spanish jabon) are from Late Latin sapo "pomade for coloring the hair" (first mentioned in Pliny), which is a Germanic loan-word, as is Finnish saippua. The meaning "flattery" is recorded from 1853.


[3] Once Upon a Time in Turkey the corner grocer sold a liquid soap called ' Arap Sabunu" by weight. It is still available yet commercially packaged. However it is very much out of favor in a competition against the major brands in the market. Considered an inferior product to the hard soap, it's naming as 'Arab Soap' is by no means a belittlement.

It is a liquid soap made by using potassium hydroxide to saponify the oils. In bar soap making sodium hydroxide was used. The potassium hydroxide molecules are larger than the sodium hydroxide molecules. It is this size difference that enables the potassium hydroxide to maintain a liquid state. Unlike cold process soap, it is ready to use immediately after the process is complete.