Aleppo Laurel Soap: Syria's Green Gold and One of the World's Oldest Soaps

Walk into a souq in Aleppo and you smell it before you see it: a light, green, oily scent like a forest. This is Aleppo laurel soap, made in the city for many centuries and considered by many one of the oldest hard soaps in the world.

Very simple ingredients

• Olive oil: the base, and the source of the green colour inside.
• Laurel oil: from the berries of the bay laurel, giving the scent and much of its character.
• Soda and water.

No synthetic perfume, no added colour. That is why people with sensitive skin love it.

How it is made

1. The oils are cooked with soda in huge vats for days. 2. The hot mixture is poured onto a wide floor lined with paper and left to set. 3. Workers walk across the surface in wooden shoes, cut it into cubes and stamp each with the maker's seal. 4. The cubes are stacked in hollow round towers so air can pass between them, and left to dry for months — at least six, sometimes years.

Over time the outside turns from green to golden brown while the inside stays green. The longer a bar dries, the harder, longer-lasting and gentler it becomes.

The laurel percentage

Bars are sometimes marked with their laurel oil content, from around 5% to 40% or more. Higher percentages cost more and smell stronger, and are said to suit oily skin and the scalp. Lower ones are gentler for everyday use.

How to spot the real thing

• Cut or scratch the bar: green inside, golden outside.
• The seal is pressed into the soap itself.
• A natural oily smell, not strong perfume.
• The bar is heavy and hard.

Where to buy

In the souqs of old Aleppo, in Souq al-Buzuriyeh in Damascus, and in spice shops in every city. Buy several bars — they keep for years and make a perfect, light gift.