Aleppo soap , along with Ghraoui chocolate, are without doubt the two best purchases in Syria! I had done my usual blog search prior to our visit to Syria to see what we would find in its famous souks and to think about my luggage requirements. Soap was definitely high on the list. Made of olive oil and laurel, I knew that, as with any good olive oil for eating, aged soap was the thing to ask for. How to distinguish old from new? The wider the “rind” of brown on the outside of a bar of soap, the older the soap. The best savon d’alep has been stored in piles like bricks and aged for one year after which it is weighted and packed in jute sacks and sent to market.
80% olive oil, 20 percent laurel oil and mixed with ash (in former times sourced from the desert plant salsola kali and now industrially produced), it is completely natural and beautifully soft on the skin.
The oldest hard soap in the world (yes, here again we have Syria taking the cake for another “original”!), it is said to have been Cleopatra’s beauty secret…
It’s a great gift to bring home and I didn’t have to pull out the additional Lonchamps bags!