In the soap factories of the Old City, olive oil is cooked into soap, then cut, stamped and stacked in towers to dry.
Nablus has long been known for its soap. Nabulsi soap is made from olive oil, the same oil Palestinian families tend every harvest.
In the factory the oil is cooked in large vats and stirred for a long time, then poured across a wide floor to cool and set. It is cut into bars, and each bar is stamped with the factory's seal.
What visitors remember most are the soap towers: bars stacked in hollow towers so that air passes between them and dries them slowly.
The Old City once had many soap factories, and some still work today. Ask in the market which ones welcome visitors, and buy a bar from the hands that made it.
