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Once upon a time…

The Aleppo soap at the origin of the Alepia range was the first soap invented in the world, 3000 years ago.

It has always been made using the same traditional method: cooking in a cauldron, then maturing for 9 months, and with the same ingredients, olive oil and bay laurel oil.

Moisturizing, it is ideal for dry and hypoallergenic skin.

From this soap, we have developed a range of liquid Aleppo soaps, no-poo shampoos, creams, vegetable oils, essential oils…

Our story: the fire of Aleppo never went out

A golden-brown bar of soap, a city of caravans, a doctor who takes the leap, a soap maker who arrives with a single suitcase. This is how a craft that tradition holds to be more than three thousand years old crossed the Mediterranean to carry on, unchanged down to the smallest movement, on the Plateau Briard, just outside Paris.

1. The scent of laurel

It all begins with a bar of soap his grandmother introduces him to. Brown like a crust of bread, a little rough, stamped with a seal you can read with a fingertip. You wet it, and a scent rises, green, slightly bitter, as clean as a leaf crushed between your fingers: laurel. And beneath the laurel, rounder, the olive.

He is a medical biologist. His job is to look closely and to believe only what he can verify. He picks up the bar and weighs it, dense, heavier than it looks, and turns it over the way you read a formula: olive oil, laurel berry oil, water, caustic soda, fire and time. Nothing else. He tries it. He is won over. He will need more, and soon a great deal more.

2. A country like any other

Samir Constantini was born in Damascus. His family settled in France when he was born: “I was born in Damascus, in Syria, but I have always lived in France.” He grew up in a home where this country was loved without reservation. “My father was a veteran, he fought alongside General de Gaulle and he instilled in us the love of France.” As a child, Syria remained a name on a map: “to me, Syria was a country like any other.”

Later he made the journey, then made it again, and little by little understood “that this country was, in a small way, my roots.” A bar of soap weighs very little. This one took him to Aleppo.

3. Three thousand years of fire

Aleppo is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. For centuries it was a gateway between the Mediterranean and the East: caravans from Persia and Anatolia unloaded silk and spices there, and left laden with the city’s own goods. In the old city, a great stone building still bears the name of soap: the Khan al-Saboun, “the soap khan,” devoted entirely to soap. Nothing says more about the place of this soap in the city: it had been given a house of its own.

According to tradition, it has been made here for more than three thousand years. The exact date matters little: what matters has not changed. Olive oil, which the surrounding hills have yielded since Antiquity. Laurel berry oil, extracted from the black fruit of the bay laurel that grows along the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, wild berries picked in autumn, a whole harvest of which gives very little oil: this is the precious part. Water. Caustic soda, once drawn from the ashes of plants. And a fire kept burning for three days, when winter comes.

The doctor has his own way of naming the two oils. Olive is “gentleness.” Laurel is “strength.”

Every soap works in Aleppo had its cauldrons, its drying rooms, and its seal: the family name, stamped by hand on every bar, the first of all brands. The hot paste was poured straight onto the floor, like a screed, left to set, then cut into squares by men walking across it on wooden skates. The bars were stacked in towers and open-work pyramids in airy rooms, and then came the waiting: months, sometimes years. Cut open, a well-aged soap shows a green heart beneath a golden crust.

This craft is learned from a master. “There is no school for soap makers,” says the founder; the technique is “passed down from master soap maker to apprentice,” “from father to son, soap makers for generations,” and “nothing has changed.” Before the war, the city had more than two hundred soap works. In Dec 2024, UNESCO inscribed this know-how on the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

As for Marseille soap, tradition has it that it descends from this one: the Crusaders, it is said, brought olive oil soap back from the East, and the process travelled up the Mediterranean to Provence, where a royal edict regulated soap making in 1688. The founder sums it up in his own way: Aleppo soap is “the origin of Marseille soap.”

“Aleppo soap is more than a soap, it is a part of Syria”

Dr Samir Constantini, LCI

4. The stall of dusty soaps

In Aleppo, soap is sold outdoors. In the old market there are “open-air stalls,” and in front of each one the maker displays his bars: the young ones, still pale, the old ones, darker, and the scent of laurel drifting down the whole alley like a single breath.

One stall stops him in his tracks. “When I was walking in Aleppo, in the old Aleppo soap market, I saw a stall with soaps all covered in dust,” he recalls. Bars forgotten on their shelves, grey with dust, “some of them 20 years old,” that nobody throws away. Quite the opposite: they are kept for the connoisseurs who want nothing else. A soap that ages is not a soap that is lost. It matures.

It is there, in that market, that he meets the soap maker. He runs a large soap works whose reputation has long since spread beyond the city walls. The French doctor who asks so many questions becomes his customer, then his best customer, then something more. “We became friends and he became my supplier.” The soap maker puts it even more simply: “We worked as partners.”

5. The leap

In France, the man has a profession, and no small one. A physician specialising in medical biology, he runs three medical laboratories in Créteil. What he brings back from Aleppo he does not keep to himself: he wants to import it, make it known, sell it. In 2004 he founds a company and gives it the name of the city: Alepia. “At first I imported Aleppo soap directly from the city of Aleppo in Syria.”

The first container, a small one, sells out very quickly. Then come the pharmacies and the organic shops, and a whole range, from liquid soap to creams, made on site, in Aleppo.

Then comes the day a man has to choose. A few years after Alepia is born, he sells his laboratories. He will sum it up in one sentence in front of a camera: “I am a doctor, […] I dropped everything to import and export Aleppo soap.” Those around him do not understand: “my doctor friends said: you did ten years of higher education, you have 3 laboratories, and you are giving it all up to sell soap? They told me I was unusual. I said no, it is my passion.” As for the rest, his method fits in one sentence: “I just went for it: I jump, and we’ll see.”

He also has a doctor’s reason: “when you sell Aleppo soap, what you are really selling is well-being.”

6. Five containers, four shells

Then Syria goes to war. At the first signs of unrest, the biologist does what he knows how to do: he anticipates. “When the unrest broke out, I told myself I might have trouble getting supplies.” He buys five containers of soap, “thinking that would be enough.” He had even had a soap works built in Aleppo: it would never make a single bar.

The roads become long and dangerous. Soon, “I could no longer get supplies.”

In Aleppo, his friend’s soap works is hit. “4 shells fell on my factory,” the soap maker will say. Part of it burns; the rest is looted. He leaves for Lebanon, never imagining it is for good. We will say no more: this is not a selling point, it is a wound.

But a craft does not live within walls; it lives in hands. The doctor makes him an offer: “come to France and together we will build a soap works.” The answer comes in a single breath: “He said yes straight away.”

Saying yes is one thing; getting there is another. It takes months of waiting for a work visa, then a journey, and a man who arrives in France “with one suitcase.” Everything needed to make Aleppo soap was already in his hands.

“I just went for it: I jump, and we’ll see”

Dr Samir Constantini, France 2, 26 Feb 2017

7. The cauldron of Santeny

In Santeny, a village on the Plateau Briard, in the Val-de-Marne, on the doorstep of Paris, the fire is lit again. The vat is smaller than the ones in Aleppo, but it is the same paste, and “we use exactly the same movements as in Syria.” “It is a soap that has existed for more than 3,000 years. And now we carry on making it in France with the same technique and the same ingredients.”

It all starts with olive oil, extra virgin, from the Mediterranean basin and chosen for its character: an oil from a hot country. It goes into the vat with the water and the caustic soda, and the fire is lit. The paste rises, thickens, simmers slowly. It cooks for three days. Three days during which the workshop smells of warm olives, and during which the soap maker watches over it. He tastes it with the tip of his tongue: this is the masters’ test, the one that tells whether the oil and the caustic soda have truly become soap. With it comes the laurel berry oil, dark green, the precious part: it is what gives the soap its scent, its colour and its price.

The paste is poured, hot, into long wooden trays, in place of the great floor of Aleppo where the screed was once spread. It is left to set. Once set, it is firm, glossy, the colour of a green olive. Then comes the cutting: lengthwise, then crosswise, by hand, guided by a blade stretched across a frame built from the soap maker’s own plans. Each bar is then stamped by hand: the seal of the house, bearing the doctor’s name and the word Momtaz, “which means excellent.”

“The place changes, but the way it is made stays the same,” says the soap maker. And the founder, with an image of his own: “It is like a great French restaurant in New York: it is still French cooking.”

8. Nine months of silence

Then the soap falls silent. The bars are stacked on pallets, in open-work towers where air reaches all six faces, where Aleppo piled them in pyramids on the floor. And then the waiting: “9 months minimum.” “Curing soap is like a good wine.” Over those months the water leaves, the paste hardens, the bright green darkens and the surface takes on the colour of honey and bread. The leftover caustic soda turns into sodium carbonate and blooms as a fine white powder: it is scraped off, bar by bar, before each one is wrapped in its kraft paper. “Over 9 months, the soap gradually matures and becomes very gentle.”

In front of a camera, the founder once split open a pre-war bar: outside, the brown crust; inside, untouched, the green of the laurel. The green heart and the seal: these are the signs of tradition.

Next to the workshop is a quality control laboratory: every batch is analysed before it is released. That is the doctor’s share of the work. An ancestral soap, he says, to which the Val-de-Marne adds “traceability and French quality.”

“The place changes, but the way it is made stays the same”

the master soap maker, France 24, 24 Dec 2016

9. One soap works, many languages

Around the cauldron, people speak French, Arabic and other languages too. “A company that brings together people of different origins, different languages, people who escaped the war […] that is a wealth, a strength, as long as there is tolerance.” An apprentice who arrived knowing nothing about soap learned the trade in front of the vat, in a few months, the way it has always been learned: by watching the master’s hands. What was passed down from father to son in Aleppo is now passed down, in Santeny, from master to apprentice.

The founder says it as a commitment: “we carry on making it here in France despite the crisis, the war and despite what the people are going through, because we want this tradition of Aleppo soap, this Syrian heritage that must not disappear, to live on.” From a trade fair in China to Tokyo and Dubai, the bar from the Val-de-Marne travels with three words on its back that no one would have imagined twenty years ago: made in France.

The Chambre de métiers et de l’artisanat awarded the house its Medal of Craft Excellence; to this are added an Innovation award, an Export award, the Île-de-France Region’s PM’UP programme and two patents. Our products are certified COSMOS Organic or COSMOS Natural, depending on the product. That is not why we light the fire.

10. In your hands

We light it for this moment. You unwrap the kraft paper. The bar is heavy, a little rough, golden brown, stamped with a seal. Two oils, water, caustic soda, fire and at least nine months of patience; nothing else. Wet it, and let the laurel rise. It is gentle on the face and body alike, for the whole family, and it lasts: an Aleppo bar wears down slowly. Week after week, the golden crust fades and the green heart appears, the same green as in the soap works of Aleppo, the same as in the Santeny workshop.

“Aleppo soap is more than a soap, it is a part of Syria,” says the founder. He never travels without it: “Wherever I go, I always take my Aleppo soap with me.” Slip one into your suitcase. It is used to travelling.

Aleppo soap has changed skies. Its craft has not changed.

Discover our Aleppo soaps

Our philosophy

At Alepia, we believe that true beauty comes from nature. That is why we strive to create products that are gentle on your skin. Our formulas are carefully developed from premium natural ingredients, with no compromise on authenticity or effectiveness. We never use harsh chemicals, parabens, sulfates or other harmful substances that could damage your skin.

Our commitment to quality

We have received several awards from the Chamber of Trades and Crafts, the French Ministry of Research and the Île-de-France Region: the Artisanal Excellence Medal, the Innovation Prize and the Export Prize. We are a PM'UP award winner and have filed two patents. At Alepia, we take pride in our constant pursuit of excellence. All our products are made with love and care, following traditional manufacturing processes and meeting strict quality standards. We work closely with local artisans in Aleppo, Syria, to source olive oil and laurel berry oil, the essential ingredients of Aleppo soap. Every batch is carefully checked to guarantee the flawless quality of our products. In France, we work closely with our colleagues at the ASDMF (Savon de Marseille France association) to exchange ideas and saponification techniques.

Our commitment to you

At Alepia, our goal is to offer you an unforgettable skincare experience. We want to support you in your search for natural beauty by providing products that are gentle on your skin. We strive to build a relationship of trust with our customers by offering them products that reflect our values of honesty, ethics and respect.

Join us on our journey towards natural beauty and discover the power of the treasures of Aleppo, enhanced in every product we offer you.

Thank you for your trust and for supporting our company.

Dr Constantini and the Alepia team