The
Turkish bath (
Turkish hamam; from
Arabic ??????,
?ammam) is the
Middle Eastern variant of a
steam bath, which can be categorized as a wet relative of the
sauna. The Turkish baths have played an important role in cultures of the Middle-East, serving as places of social gathering, ritual cleansing, and as architectural structures, institutions, and (later) elements with special customs attached to them. Europeans learned about the Hamam via contacts with the
Ottomans, hence the "Turkish" part of the name.
In Western Europe, the Turkish bath as a method of cleansing the body and relaxation was particularly popular during the Victorian era. The process involved in taking a Turkish bath is similar to that of a sauna, but is more closely related to the ancient Roman bathing practices.
A person taking a Turkish bath first relaxes in a room (known as the warm room) that is heated by a continuous flow of hot, dry air allowing the bather to perspire freely. Bathers may then move to an even hotter room (known as the hot room) before splashing themselves with cold water. After performing a full body wash and receiving a massage, bathers finally retire to the cooling-room for a period of relaxation.
In Turkey, the advent of modern plumbing systems, showers, and bathtubs in homes caused the importance of hamams to fade in recent times.
