Castile soap is an olive oil based hard soap made in a style similar to that originating in the Castile region of Spain. The origins of Castile soap go back to the Levant, where Aleppo soap-makers have made hard soaps based on olive and laurel oil for millennia. Early soap-makers in the Mediterranean area 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.

In the 17th century, the soap caused controversy in England, since it supplanted the unnamed local soap after the Spanish Catholic manufacturers purchased the monopoly on the soap from the cash-strapped Carolinian government. Its ties to Catholicism caused a public-relations campaign to be established, featuring washerwomen showing how much more effective local soaps were than Castile soap. The sale of a monopoly in Protestant England to a Catholic company caused a great uproar, ending with the Castile soap company eventually being stripped of the monopoly.

Nabulsi soap is a type of castile soap produced only in Nablus in the West Bank, Palestine. Its chief ingredients are virgin olive oil (the main agricultural product of the region), water, and an alkaline sodium compound. The finished product is ivory-colored and has almost no scent. Traditionally made by women for household use, it had become a significant industry for Nablus by the 14th century. In 1907 the city’s 30 Nabulsi soap factories were supplying half the soap in Palestine. Project Hope and other local non-governmental organizations market the soap in the West to raise funds for their other community projects.

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