The Turkish Bath and the Ottoman Hammam Tradition

The hammam — the Ottoman public bath — was a defining social institution of the empire. Every neighborhood of every Ottoman city had its hammam, and the bath was a regular part of the weekly routine of most Ottomans. The wealthy had private baths in their houses and palaces; the middle classes frequented the neighborhood hammam; the very poor were admitted free at the hammams of the imperial foundations. This article describes the design, the ritual, and the social role of the Ottoman hammam, and complements the broader surveys of Ottoman society and culture and of Ottoman architecture.

Key dates

1337 — Orhan Gazi’s Hammam in Bursa, one of the earliest surviving Ottoman structures.
15th c. — Development of the classical three-room hammam plan (camekân, soğukluk, hararet) from Seljuk and Mamluk precedents.
1556 — The Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı in Istanbul, by Mimar Sinan.
1557 — The Süleymaniye Hamamı, also by Sinan.
1577 — The Hammam of the Harem, in Topkapı.
1580 — The Kılıç Ali Pasha Hamamı, by Sinan.
1584 — The Çemberlitaş Hamamı, by Sinan; still in operation today.
1741 — The Cağaloğlu Hamamı, the last great imperial hammam in Istanbul; also still working.

Origins

The Ottoman hammam was descended from the Roman thermae and the Arab bath of the early Islamic world. The earliest Ottoman hammams were built in the late 13th century, in the period of the founding of the emirate, and by the 17th century the hammam was a fixture of every city of the empire. The hammam was a thoroughly public institution, generally owned by a private individual or by a pious foundation, and it charged a small fee for admission. Many of the great külliye complexes of the empire included a hammam, and the income of the hammam supported the mosque, the medrese, the hospital, and the soup kitchen of the foundation.

Suraiya Faroqhi’s chapter on bathing and hygiene in Subjects of the Sultan (2000) is the best modern short account; Nina Ergin’s work on the early Ottoman bath is the best on the Seljuk and early Ottoman inheritance. The Ottoman hammam is a distinct type, but the camekân / soğukluk / hararet sequence is recognizable in 14th-century Bursa, and the Bursa hammams are the prototypes of the classical plan.

The design of the hammam

The Ottoman hammam was built around three principal rooms, each progressively hotter: the camekân (cool entrance hall, generally a domed room with a fountain in the center, where the bather undressed and rested), the soğukluk (warm room for acclimatization), and the hararet (the hot room, the principal room of the hammam). The hararet was a large, domed room with a central göbektaşı — a raised, heated marble platform at the center of the room, where the bather lay to be soaped, scrubbed, and rinsed — and a series of smaller private compartments, the halvet, each with its own basin, fountain, and marble bench, in which the bather could rest in private. The walls and floors of the hararet were made of marble, and the room was heated by a system of flues that ran under the floors and behind the walls. The hammam also had its own su deposu (water tank) on the upper floor and its own külhan (furnace room) in the basement.

“The bath is a school of politeness. The bather leaves the street with his shoes on his feet and his temper on his face; in an hour he comes out with his shoes in his hand and his temper in his pocket. He has been washed, scrubbed, soaped, and rinsed, and he has sat in the cool camekân and drunk a glass of sherbet with his neighbor; he is a different man.” — Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname (c. 1640–1682), Vol. 1, on the discipline of the Istanbul hammam

The principal surviving hammams of Istanbul are the Çemberlitaş Hamamı (1584), built by Mimar Sinan; the Cağaloğlu Hamamı (1741); the Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamamı (1556), also built by Sinan; the Kılıç Ali Pasha Hamamı (1580); and the Süleymaniye Hamamı (1557). Of these, the Çemberlitaş, the Cağaloğlu, the Kılıç Ali Pasha, and the Çarşamba hamams are still working bathhouses today.

The ritual of the hammam

The ritual of the hammam was a regular part of Ottoman weekly life. Most Ottomans went to the hammam once a week, the men generally on the day before the Friday prayer and the women on the day after. The sexes were strictly separated: most hammams had separate sections for men and women, and a few had separate buildings that alternated days of the week. The double hammam — the çifte hamam — was the common type: two symmetrical halves of a single building, the men’s and the women’s, with separate entrances and a shared furnace room in the basement.

The visit began in the camekân, where the customer changed into a peştemal (cotton wrap) and wooden clogs, the takunya. From there the customer was led into the soğukluk to acclimatize, and from there into the hararet. In the hararet, the customer was washed by the natır (for a woman) or the tellak (for a man), soaped, scrubbed with a rough mitt called a kese, massaged, and rinsed with hot and then cold water. The process took about thirty minutes to an hour, and the customer was then led back to the camekân to rest, to drink tea or sherbet, and to cool down.

The men’s day was generally Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Evliya Çelebi records that the men of Istanbul traditionally went to the hammam on Thursday afternoon, in time to be purified for the Friday prayer. The women’s day was generally Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, and the women’s hammam was a different kind of social space from the men’s — louder, more crowded, more given to conversation and to the long ceremonial visits of the gelin hamamı and the lohusa şenliği.

The hammam was a major social institution. It was the place in which much of the social life of the neighborhood took place, and the place in which many of the major life events were marked. The bride-to-be visited the hammam on the eve of her wedding, accompanied by her female relatives, in a ceremony called the gelin hamamı. The mother-to-be visited the hammam for the ritual bath of the fortieth day after the birth, in a ceremony called the lohusa şenliği. The mourners of a deceased person visited the hammam on the day after the burial, in a ceremony called the yas hamamı. These ceremonies are part of the broader web of rituals of the Ottoman family and the imperial harem, and the food and drink served on such occasions is described in the article on Ottoman cuisine.

The hammam was also a place of business. The merchants, brokers, and moneylenders of the neighborhood often met in the camekân to discuss business, and the corporate meetings of the guilds were sometimes held there. The hammam was a recognized neutral ground in which strangers could meet, deals could be made, and disputes could be settled.

The hammam of the imperial household

The imperial household at Topkapı Palace had its own private hammams. The most important were the Hammam of Hürrem Sultan (1556, designed by Sinan), the Hammam of the Harem (1577), the Hammam of the Aghas (1665), and the Hammam of the Double Kiosk (1665). The ritual of the imperial hammam was more elaborate than that of the public hammam, and the bath of the sultan was a major event in the daily life of the palace. The broader context of the harem is described in the article on life in the imperial harem.

The decline of the hammam

The hammam began to decline in the 19th century, as the empire modernized, in-house plumbing replaced the bath in the upper classes, and the cost of heating the furnace became prohibitive. By the mid-20th century, only a small number of the historical hammams of Istanbul were still in operation, and most of the population had replaced the hammam with the in-house shower. The surviving working hammams are now principally used by tourists and a small loyal clientele, but the ritual of the hammam is still a recognized part of Turkish culture, and the surviving hammams of Istanbul, Edirne, and Bursa are an important part of the cultural heritage of the empire. The provincial hammam — the great baths of Bursa (the Çekirge, the Eski Kaplıca, the Yeni Kaplıca), of Edirne (the Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, the Selimiye), of Cairo, and of Damascus — has been better preserved, in some cases, than the Istanbul hammam, and the Bursa thermal baths in particular have been in continuous use for six centuries.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a hammam and a Turkish bath? None. “Hammam” is the Arabic and Turkish word; “Turkish bath” is the European English name for the same institution, popularized in the 19th century when the Ottoman bath became a fashionable site of European travel writing and Orientalist fascination. The British writer Ferdi McFadden’s Turkish Bath (1957) records the late survival of the tradition in the European spa.

How often did Ottomans go to the hammam? Once a week, generally. The men’s day was Thursday (in time for the Friday prayer), and the women’s day was Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. The religious minorities followed different schedules: the Jews of Istanbul, for example, traditionally went to the hammam on Friday afternoon, in time for the Sabbath.

Is the Ottoman hammam the same as the Roman bath? Structurally related, yes, but the Ottoman hammam is a distinct institution. The Romans built the great imperial thermae — the Baths of Caracalla, the Baths of Diocletian — on a much larger scale, and the Roman bath included the tepidarium, caldarium, and frigidarium in a single continuous sequence. The Ottoman hammam is a smaller, more private, and more socially ritualized institution, organized around the camekân / soğukluk / hararet sequence, and its social function — the gelin hamamı, the lohusa şenliği, the yas hamamı — has no Roman equivalent. The Roman inheritance is real, but the Ottoman form is the Ottomans’ own.