Olive-growing land, skilled workshops, and trade helped connect Tripoli to a wider soapmaking tradition.
A city connected to the olive harvest
Traditional olive-oil soap depended on more than a recipe. Soapmakers needed a dependable supply of olive oil, fuel, vats, workers, and enough space to pour, cut, and cure large batches. Tripoli sat beside the agricultural areas of northern Lebanon, where olive groves supplied one of the craft’s essential ingredients.
The countryside and the city worked together. Growers produced the olives, mills extracted the oil, and workshops turned that oil into bars that could be stored and traded. Soapmaking became part of a wider network of farming, skilled labor, and commerce.
Tripoli in a wider soapmaking world
Tripoli is often discussed alongside Aleppo and Nablus as one of the historic soapmaking centers of the eastern Mediterranean. The cities shared an olive-oil foundation, but each developed its own workshops, methods, and local identity. Soap traveled well because a cured bar was durable and useful, making it suited to trade beyond the city where it was made.
Over time, industrial production and changing consumer habits reshaped the trade. Many traditional workshops closed as urban development reduced nearby orchards and mass-produced cleansers became more common. Tripoli’s soap history is therefore both a story of a once larger industry and of the workshops that continued.
A family workshop still making soap in Tripoli
Masbanat Awaida was founded in Tripoli in 1880 by Haj Hussein Awaida. Five generations later, the family still makes soap in the city. Its Traditional Olive Oil Soap is slowly cooked, poured, cut and stamped by hand, then cured for six months.
That continuity gives the history a present-day address. The olive-growing region still supplies the oil, and the workshop still turns it into soap in Tripoli. Each bar connects a local crop, a family craft, and a city whose soapmaking history reaches back long before this one workshop began.
From our workshop in Tripoli: the Traditional olive oil bar, our perfumed olive oil soaps, or all soaps. Common questions are answered on our FAQ page.