SDLC 110 Turkish- Culture Post #2 Turkish Baths

[Noraya Razzaque]

The Turkish bath extended from the Romans' public bath houses. Called "hamams", the purpose of these public bath houses are for socializing, emphasis on spiritual cleaning, and typical Ottoman splendor. Istanbul holds most of the remaining bath houses from the Ottoman Empire- bath houses that are still functioning. At first, hamams were strictly for womem, but that changed with modernity. All hamams are segregated, but they can be in the same building (in these modern times). 

Socializing is so integral to hamams that it was and, to an extent, still is a hub for things like searching for daughter-in-laws to holding business meetings. Although it is not as popular as it was in its earlier days, hamams are now marketed towards tourists and part of pre-wedding rituals (women goes to the hamam with her female friends and family as a ritual leading up to the wedding).

The structure of a hamam is as such: bathers first go into the warm room where they can relax and perspire in the hot dry air and prepare to go into the hot room. The hot room intensifies the sweating and then the bather goes into the steam and massage room. A masseuse scrubs the bather down (there's lots of dead skin and invasion of personal space involved) with a rough loofah-like sponge or pebble and soap. A massage follows the washing after which the bather goes to finish relaxing in the cold room or pool (if there is one). The last room is where the most socializing would occur with music and sweets.

An interesting discovery that I made about hamams was about men's bathing attendants, "tellaks". They were young boys who were non-Muslim subjects in the empire who "attended" to customers. The connotation of attending to them is thoroughly sexual; while sodomy was not acceptable, other sexual acts that were supposedly not explicitly forbidden in Islam were. Furthermore, this was an untaxed, paid service.