hammam
Sign in to savethumb|upright=1.2|Ali Gholi Agha hammam, [[Isfahan, Iran]] A hammam (), also often called a Turkish bath by Westerners, is a type of steam bath or a place of public bathing associated with the Islamic world. It is a prominent feature in the culture of the Muslim world and was inherited from the model of the Roman thermae. Muslim bathhouses or hammams were historically found across the Middle East, North Africa, al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia, i.e. Spain and Portugal), Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and in Southeastern Europe (notably Balkans and Hungary) under Ottoman rule.
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A hammam is a type of steam bath or public bathing facility that has been an important part of Islamic culture, inherited from ancient Roman bathing traditions. These bathhouses were historically spread across the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, Portugal, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and parts of southeastern Europe under Ottoman rule.
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Article
44 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- History
- Origins and early development
- Later Islamic baths
- Contemporary era
- Public bathing in the Islamic context
- Bathing practices and services
- Massage
- Social function: gendered social space
- Architecture
- General design
- Variations
- Maghreb and al-Andalus
- Ottoman baths
- Iran
- Regional examples
- Jordan
- Al-Andalus (Spain and Portugal)
- Morocco
- Algeria
- Syria
- Egypt
- Turkey
- Azerbaijan
- South Asia
- Greece
- Cyprus
- North Macedonia
- Bulgaria
- Hungary
- Crimea (Ukraine)
- Hammams in Western Europe
- The British Isles in the 19th century
- France, post World War I
- Europe, post World War II
- Cultural representations of the hammam
- Art
- Movies
- Literature
- See also
- Notes
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|upright=1.2|Ali Gholi Agha hammam, [[Isfahan, Iran]] A hammam (), also often called a Turkish bath by Westerners, is a type of steam bath or a place of public bathing associated with the Islamic world. It is a prominent feature in the culture of the Muslim world and was inherited from the model of the Roman thermae. Muslim bathhouses or hammams were historically found across the Middle East, North Africa, al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia, i.e. Spain and Portugal), Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and in Southeastern Europe (notably Balkans and Hungary) under Ottoman rule.
In Islamic cultures the significance of the hammam was both religious and civic: it provided for the needs of ritual ablutions but also provided for general hygiene in an era before private plumbing and served other social functions such as offering a gendered meeting place for men and for women. Archeological remains attest to the existence of bathhouses in the Islamic world as early as the Umayyad period (7th–8th centuries) and their importance has persisted up to modern times. Their architecture evolved from the layout of Roman and Greek bathhouses and featured a regular sequence of rooms: an undressing room, a cold room, a warm room, and a hot room. Heat was produced by furnaces which provided hot water and steam, while smoke and hot air was channeled through conduits under the floor.