page_title: Nablus
section_title: Cuisine
hierarchical_section_title: Nablus / Culture and arts / Cuisine
caption_attribution_description: English: Kinafa
context_page_description: Nablus is a city in the northern West Bank, approximately 49 kilometers north of Jerusalem, with a population of 126,132. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a Palestinian commercial and cultural center, home to An-Najah National University, one of the largest Palestinian institutions of higher learning, and the Palestinian stock-exchange.
  The city was named by the Roman emperor Vespasian in 72 CE as Flavia Neapolis. During the Byzantine period, conflict between the city's Christian and Samaritan inhabitants peaked in a series of Samaritan revolts before their suppression in 529 dwindled that community's numbers in the city. With the Muslim conquest in the 7th century, the city was given its present Arabic name Nablus. The Crusaders drafted the laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Council of Nablus and its Muslim, Christian and Samaritan inhabitants prospered. The city then came under the control of the Ayyubids and Mamluk Sultanate. Under the Ottomans, who conquered the city in 1517, Nablus served as the administrative and commercial center for the surrounding area, corresponding to the present-day northern West Bank.
context_section_description: 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 (or Kunafa) is the best known Nabulsi sweet. It 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. Now made throughout the Middle East, kanafeh Nabulsi uses 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.
caption: A siniyyeh of Kanafeh
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