Nablus City

Nablus (sometimes called Nābulus) is a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, approximately 63 kilometers (39 mi) north of Jerusalem, with a population of 134,000. Located in a strategic position between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a Palestinian commercial and cultural center.

:Culture and arts

 Nablus and its culture enjoy a certain renown throughout the Palestinian Territories and the Arab world with significant and unique contributions to Palestinian culture, cuisine and costume. Nabulsi, meaning "from Nablus", is used to describe items such as handicrafts (e.g. Nabulsi soap) and food products (e.g. Nabulsi cheese) that are made in Nablus or in the traditional Nablus style.

:Cuisine

Nablus is one of the Palestinian cities that sustained elite classes, fostering the development of a culture of "high cuisine", such as that of Damascus or Baghdad. The city is home to a number of food products well known throughout the Levant, the Arab world and the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

Kanafeh is the most famed Nabulsi sweet. Originating in Nablus during the 15th century, by 1575, its recipe was exported throughout the Ottoman Empire — which controlled Palestine at the time. Kanafeh is made of several fine shreds of pastry noodles with honey-sweetened cheese in the center. The top layer of the pastry is usually dyed orange with food coloring and sprinkled with crushed pistachios. Though it is now made throughout the Middle East, to the present day, kanafeh Nabulsi enjoys continued fame, partly due to its use of a white-brine cheese called jibneh Nabulsi. Boiled sugar is used as a syrup for kanafeh.

Other sweets made in Nablus include baklawa, "Tamriya", mabrumeh and ghuraybeh,a plain pastry made of butter, flour and sugar in an "S"-shape, or shaped as fingers or bracelets.

Kanafeh 

:Soap production

Nabulsi soap or sabon nabulsi is a type of castile soap produced only in Nablus and made of three primary ingredients: virgin olive oil, water, and a sodium compound. Since the 10th century, Nabulsi soap has enjoyed a reputation for being a fine product,[84] and has been exported across the Arab world and to Europe.Though the number of soap factories decreased from a peak of thirty in the 19th century to only two today, efforts to preserve this important part of Palestinian and Nabulsi cultural heritage continue.

Nabulsi soap

Made in a cube-like shape about 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) tall and 2.25 by 2.25 inches (5.7 by 5.7 cm) wide, the color of Nabulsi soap is like that of "the page of an old book."The cubes are stamped on the top with the seal of the factory that produces it.The soap's sodium compound came from the barilla plant. Prior to the 1860s, in the summertime, the barilla would be placed in towering stacks, burned, and then the ashes and coals would be gathered into sacks, and transported to Nablus from the area of modern-day Jordan in large caravans. In the city, the ashes and coals were pounded into a fine natural alkaline soda powder called qilw. Today, qilw is still used in combination with lime.