Allah loves those who cleanse themselves
-Surah 9, Verse 108
I first met Fouad and his father Musbah in 2003 when I was in Aleppo to write about the city's ever changing, never changing kaleidoscope of shops in its old and new quarters, whether large stores or small stalls, in the Suq or in Jdayde, in khan or qissariya, on the avenue or in the alley, in the magasin or the makhzan.
Near Bab al-Faraj's Clock Tower was where I found the Fansa family store, its Tanānīr of stacked bars of soap looking like the bread ovens for which they are named. Even the blind, especially the blind, know when they enter certain kinds of shop in Aleppo. Spice shops, perfume shops, bread shops, and saboun shops. Especially saboun.
My plan was to interview shopkeepers selling at retail, reselling what they bought from others, and those selling at wholesale, what they made themselves. The article was titled 4,000 Years Behind the Counter, recognizing that Aleppo's commercial history was longer than any other in the world.
For one to speak of Aleppo's sellers, one must first speak of what they sold, products made no place but here, products identified with this city as closely as people identify Damascene steel and Damask silks with Damascus.
That is how Khaldoun Fansa, one of Aleppo's leading practitioners of architectural preservation, after he had guided me through the old Suq to meet his friends- sellers of Aleppine brocaded textiles, Aleppine tent trappings, and Aleppine bric-a-brac from the French colonial period- led me to the Bab al-Faraj to meet his cousins, makers of Aleppo's best bath soap.
Saboun Maghribi, Western Soap, according to Lane, is an inferior variety, "not well made", "like cooked starch", "the washing of the head with it hastens hoariness". Aleppo soap on the contrary is Eastern soap, and so much the better. Lane defines Saboun al-Humūm, Soap of the Blues, as a metaphor for wine, with which you clean your mind of the blues. Saboun al-Hammām, Soap of the Bath, is not so different, because with the Fansa soap you clean your body of the blues.
Khaldoun had been eager to show off the Old City's private mansions whose architecture he had saved, by rebuilding and rededicating them for new civic purpose. One such mansion belonged to the qanun player Julien Jalal Eddine Weiss whose musical ensemble played and recorded classical Arab maqām under a sonically pure dome.
Julien's group was named for the Iraqi polymath Al-Kindi who in the 9th Century added a fifth string to the oud and thereby gave its plucked sounds a far more complex resonance...just as the addition of berries from the laurel tree, Laurus nobilis, gave a more complex olfaction to soap made from olive oil alone.
I remember one of Musbah's anecdotes about Tasbīn, a noun derived from the verb Sabbana, To Lather, and how his customers boast in the hammām of their Fansa soap. "Why," I asked him, "are the soap bars of Aleppo so large, the size of a brick? Why are they not smaller, fit for the palm of your hand?"
Musbah answered with a smile, "You do not understand Aleppine pride. When we bathe in public, we want everyone to see the maker's mark on our soap, as a way to show that we buy only the finest, most expensive brand. Thus we grip the bar in the hand so that our family stamp does not rub off, so we make Tasbīn only from the other side."
I cannot go into the details of the work of the Fansa Sabbān, Soapmaker, because at the time of my visit it was a closely held secret, but Khaldoun did take me to their Masban, Place of Soap(making). And just as the domed room gave Julien's music-making an extra sonic richness, so too did the domed rooms of the Masban in an old caravanserai lend an extra aroma to Musbah's saboun-making.
The rooms were quiet and empty when I visited the Masban. All the soap had already been sold and shipped. The floors were clean, polished and waxed. Using them as soap making surfaces will do that, even to tiles dating from the Middle Ages. But there was one thing I still did sense, something like an oud’s resonating fifth string. Not a sound but rather a scent. It was the hint of laurel oil, and the smell alone left me abuzz and feeling clean.