Imperial Ottoman

Society & Culture · Article

The Turkish Bath and the Ottoman Hammam Tradition

The design, ritual, and social role of the Ottoman hammam — the public bath of the empire, its place in daily life, and its surviving examples in Istanbul and beyond.

The Turkish Bath and the Ottoman Hammam Tradition

The hammam, the Ottoman public bath, was one of the most important social institutions 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 it complements the broader surveys of Ottoman society and culture and of Ottoman architecture.

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 thirteenth century, in the period of the founding of the emirate, and by the seventeenth 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.

The design of the hammam

The Ottoman hammam was built around three principal rooms, each progressively hotter: the camekân (cool entrance hall), the soğukluk (warm room for acclimatization), and the hararet (hot room, the principal room of the hammam). The hararet was a large, domed room with a central göbektaşı — a raised, heated marble platform — and a series of smaller private compartments, the halvet, each with its own basin, fountain, and marble bench. 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 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 architecture of the hammam is treated in the broader article on Ottoman architecture.

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 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 broader context of Ottoman food and drink is described in the article on Ottoman cuisine, and the coffee served in the camekân in the article on Ottoman coffee culture.

The social role of the hammam

The hammam was a major social institution. It was the place in which much of the social life of the neighborhood took place, and it was 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), 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 and in the article on the Ottoman family and the imperial harem.

The decline of the hammam

The hammam began to decline in the nineteenth 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-twentieth 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 are an important part of the cultural heritage of the empire.