TRIPOLI: Like various traditional products, which were once considered essential and basic, old-fashioned health and hygiene items have today become forgotten.
However, the traditional Lebanese soap – commonly known as saboon baladi – is regaining some of its former glory, as people are rediscovering its therapeutic benefits.
The comeback falls into a worldwide trend of returning to traditional and natural products, especially when it comes to cosmetics and medicine.
Lebanon’s northern coastal city of Tripoli has particularly profited from this resurgence and its famous soap factory is currently witnessing very prosperous days.
The factory, known as Khan al-Saboon, flourished in the Mamluk era and was built in a neighborhood filled with perfume makers, chemists and physicians. The Khan was able to turn Tripoli into a “Soap Kingdom,” with a number of families leading the business.
Among these families was the Hassoun family, which passed down its secret recipes from generation to generation and is still managing the factory today.
Bader Hassoun explained that soap making has been a family trade for about eight centuries. “The women used to create the herbal combinations to make the products, which were later sold near the factory … As for the men, they were scattered in different levels of the manufacturing process,” he said, noting that the most important part of the procedure was the mixture of herbs and scents.
History records show that soap products in Tripoli were in great demand and the rate of their exportation could be compared to that of silk and sugar.
Books also show that Europeans were introduced to soap and to its health benefits after the crusades campaigns. The product played such a significant role in Lebanon and the region that it was present in mythological tales. It was said that Adonis used to offer soaps scented with herbs to his lover Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love.
At the time, Lebanese soap makers were only able to produce 21 different types of soaps, perfumes and creams, all based on three main combinations known as the Trabulsiya, the Sultaniya and the Malakiya.
Today more than 2,000 products can be found at the Tripoli soap factory in Lebanon and at its branches in the Arab Gulf, Europe and America.
“The new products have new therapeutic functions. Throughout the past years we’ve gathered recipes from Arab and foreign soap factories, including China and India, where soap manufacturing has a long history,” said Hassoun.
He added that some of the new soaps could be used to cure certain skin diseases. “I give out free samples to costumers. They can try them and see for themselves,” he noted.
However, Khan al-Saboon is still facing some difficulties and might encounter more trouble in the future.
Hassoun said he was still trying to make the production process completely Lebanese and was working on replacing any foreign material with local ones. He added that a contract would soon be signed with a Lebanese cardboard firm, which will provide the factory with all its soap-wrapping material.
But even if such an obstacle could be overcome, another hindrance may lie ahead as the Tripoli municipality and the Culture Ministry are trying to acquire the factory.
Details of the possible acquisition remain unclear and the economic benefits to come from it are also ambiguous, but Hassoun fears that shifting the factory’s ownership toward a collective property might lead to instability. “I am afraid that Khan al-Saboon would become soulless without its soap,” he said.
You can visit the Tripoli Khan al Saboon as part of you Lebanon Packages or your Lebanon Vacations
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