The mother of all vegan soaps

Aleppo soap, Marseille soap, Castilian soap: they are all made of olive oil.

Just like good wine, good soap is made of excellent ingredients whose origin is far from irrelevant.

Olives and bay leaves

The worldwide fame of vegetable-based soap started in Aleppo in Syria. Made of olive oil and enriched with bay oil, fresh soap had a green colour and turned golden-brown by the time it was finished. According to the scriptures, the soap’s users included Cleopatra too. Its fame started to spread in Europe in the 11. Century AD as returning crusaders brought it home to a public less and less concerned with hygiene since the disappearance of ancient Roman bath culture.

Most Europeans would use ash-grey soaps that were made of animal fat and had an unpleasant smell. Thanks to the traders of the Levant, the brown-crusted, cobblestone-sized soap with Arabic letters stamped into it became a hugely popular luxury product the world over. Until very recent times, the soap was made in vast, round bowls by families that had passed the craft down the generations for centuries. But the war in Syria has forced many of those families to leave their homes and their age-old workshops. According to news reports, some ended up in Lebanon and have continued with their trade – but because they are no longer able to get their raw materials from the Aleppo region there are fears that the legendary Aleppo soap will never be the same again.

Soap made with sea water

The soap of Marseille has several claims to fame. It has a thousand-year-old tradition and a special trait: it’s made with olive oil and Marseille sea water. The trade mark was registered by no lesser a figure than the Sun King, Louis XIV in 1688. To this day, the soap is made in family workshops and enriched with bran, dried coconut and/or palm oil. Oil, sea water, alkaline solution and ash are heated in huge, 8-ton kettles. The whole process may take up to a month – until the soap is cut into 5-40 g units. Nowadays, the average artisan Marseille soap sold by family shops weighs 300 grams.

The perfect skin care product made of a single ingredient

The Hispanic ‘younger cousin’ of the Aleppo soap is a satin-white soap made of a single ingredient, and it’s also the forerunner of Manna’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil soap. Also known as ‘the Queen of Soaps’, Castilian soap was named after the Spanish region where people made the first soaps out of olive oil. Exceptionally gentle and made exclusively from Spanish olive oil, the soap quickly became popular on the continent. Little wonder: its high vitamin E content made the soap suitable for use even on the most sensitive skin as well as on psoriasis and eczema. I believe that no one has ever come up with a better cosmetic for dry skin, problem skin and for skin that’s prone to flushing. Have you tried it yet?

(Photo: Wikipedia - Bernard Gagnon)