Salfit, Palestine: The Olive Oil Heartland of the West Bank

TL;DR: The name Salfit comes from a Canaanite phrase for basket of grapes, sal for basket and fit for grapes, and the hills around the town still make good on it. Salfit, Palestine (سلفيت, Salfit), is the capital of Salfit Governorate in the central West Bank, set between Nablus and Ramallah, and it is the largest olive oil producer in the country: about 1,500 tons a year, drawn from a governorate that is eighty percent agricultural land. Pottery from the Iron Age sits beneath a town rebuilt under early Muslim rule and taxed by Ottoman registers in 1596. The olive tree that once filled Canaanite grape baskets still fills Salfit's presses, the same crop at the center of FALASTIN's own Palestinian clothing collection.

Where Salfit Sits in the Hills of the West Bank

Salfit sits in the hill country Palestinians have long called Jabal Nablus, about 34 kilometers north of Jerusalem and 17 kilometers south of Nablus itself, at an elevation of roughly 570 meters. It is the capital of Salfit Governorate, home to the city itself and eighteen surrounding towns and villages that share its olive terraces.

Salfit city alone counted 10,911 residents in the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' 2017 count, up from 901 in 1922 and 1,830 in 1945. The town was granted municipality status in 1955, and in 1995 it became the seat of its own governorate, one of the smaller Palestinian administrative districts but, acre for acre, among the most productive.

The Basket of Grapes: Salfit's Ancient and Ottoman History

Archaeologists have recovered pottery from Salfit dating to Iron Age I and II, the Persian period, the Hellenistic period, and the Roman period, though no Byzantine-era sherds have turned up. The historian Ronnie Ellenblum places Salfit's re-establishment in the early centuries of Muslim rule, between the seventh and eleventh centuries, and Crusader, Ayyubid, and Mamluk-era material shows the town stayed inhabited through each that followed.

The Ottoman Empire absorbed Salfit in 1517. Its 1596 tax register lists 118 households and two unmarried men, all Muslim, paying roughly 7,618 akçe a year on their crops, the same olives and grapes still worked in the governorate today. That continuity, a tax roll from four centuries ago describing the same hillsides a FALASTIN customer sees in a photograph now, is part of what a city profile like this one exists to hold onto.

What Makes Salfit the Olive Oil Capital of Palestine?

Salfit earns the title plainly: the governorate produces more olive oil than any other in Palestine, about 1,500 tons a year, and eighty percent of its land is given over to agriculture. Grapes, figs, citrus, and apples round out the harvest, but olives carry the governorate's name in every market from Nablus to Ramallah.

The connection runs both directions. An hour's drive north, Nablus has pressed olive oil into soap for centuries, much of it from groves like Salfit's. The same tree carries its own weight in Palestinian memory: the olive as a symbol of roots and endurance is older than any single harvest, and Salfit's presses are where that symbol becomes an actual living.

Salfit functions as more than a producer. It is the administrative and commercial center for the eighteen towns and villages around it, the place farmers from Deir Istiya, Biddya, and the other hill villages bring their olives and almonds, the governorate's other staple crop, to be pressed, sold, and weighed, much as Ottoman tax officials once logged the same harvest four centuries ago.

Wadi Qana: Eleven Springs North of the City

North of Deir Istiya, one of Salfit Governorate's own towns, a valley called Wadi Qana holds eleven natural springs across more than ten thousand dunums of land. Farmers from Deir Istiya and nearby villages have long worked the valley for olives, citrus, and stone fruit, and the valley is recognized as a nature reserve.

Wadi Qana is not unlike Qalqilya's citrus plain further west: both are places where Palestinian farming and a particular landscape have shaped each other for longer than either has been mapped by an outside authority. A valley with eleven springs in dry hill country is not an accident of geography; it is the reason a town could grow olives here at all.

Frequently Asked Questions about Salfit, Palestine

What does the name Salfit mean?
Salfit comes from a Canaanite phrase combining sal, basket, and fit, grapes: basket of grapes. A nineteenth-century British survey by Edward Henry Palmer suggested a second possible root, a phrase for levelled sown field, though the grape-basket origin is the one the Salfit Chamber of Commerce and local tradition keep.

Where is Salfit located?
Salfit sits in the central West Bank hill country, about 34 kilometers north of Jerusalem and 17 kilometers south of Nablus, at an elevation of roughly 570 meters. It is the capital of Salfit Governorate.

What is Salfit known for?
Salfit is known as the olive oil capital of Palestine. The governorate produces about 1,500 tons of olive oil a year, more than any other governorate in the country, from land that is eighty percent agricultural.

How old is Salfit?
Pottery found at Salfit dates to Iron Age I and II, with further sherds from the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. The town was re-established under early Muslim rule between the seventh and eleventh centuries and has been continuously inhabited since.

What is Wadi Qana?
Wadi Qana is a valley just north of Deir Istiya village in Salfit Governorate, holding eleven natural springs across more than ten thousand dunums of land farmed for olives, citrus, and stone fruit. It is recognized as a nature reserve.

At FALASTIN, we aim to keep that heritage alive through our Palestinian clothing collection.

100% of profits from FALASTIN are donated to the United Palestinian Appeal.