Turkish Bath

A Turkish bath, or hamam in Turkish, is a type of bathing house where the body is cleansed with hot water and steam, followed by rinsing with cool water and vigorous scrubbing. It is a social and hygiene practice that became well known through the Ottoman Empire, though its origins lie in Roman and Byzantine bathing traditions and the Islamic rules for ritual cleanliness.

Unlike Roman baths, which had large pools where many people bathed together, Islamic baths typically used running water flowing from pipes or taps. This reflected Islamic law, which preferred running water over standing water for ritual ablution.

Layout

A typical hammam has three rooms of varying temperature. The first room is cool; it serves as a place to undress, rest, and drink tea. The second room is warm and prepares the body. The third room is very hot and usually contains a large stone platform in the center, heated from below—in Turkish called a göbek taşı (belly stone). Heat is supplied by a system of heated air passing beneath the floor and driven by fire from the adjacent furnace.

Use

The user sits on the hot stone until the skin perspires and softens. Then a specialized attendant—male attendants are called tellak, female attendants natır—scrubs the body with a rough cloth (kese) to remove dead skin, followed by vigorous washing with lye soap and a rough flannel. Finally the body is rinsed with water, after which the user rests and drinks.

Social role

The hammam was more than a place of hygiene. It functioned as a public meeting place, especially for women, where celebrations were held before weddings, after births, and for family gatherings. Men and women used the baths at different times: some hammams had two separate buildings, while others were a single building with separate hours. Many hammams were endowments—property dedicated for the benefit of mosques and public services.

Today

With private bathrooms becoming common in cities, the number of working hammams has declined in recent centuries. Some historic ones now serve as tourist attractions or have been converted into museums and cultural centers. The term "Turkish bath" is also applied to steam rooms built in Europe and America from the nineteenth century onward, though these differ in design from the traditional hammam.