Database: Hammam
Before the advent of modern plumbing made private bathing a widely available commodity, the hammam (public baths) served as one of the quintessential institutions of any big city of the Abbasid empire. They played a central role in promoting hygiene and public health, and were one of the focal points of urban social life.
By the Abbasid period, public bathing was already an old tradition in the region. Numerous baths had been built by the Persians and the Romans in their respective empires, which served as inspiration for the caliphs. The Umayyads, the Abbasids' predecessors and rivals, are famous for the baths that were an important part of their palace complexes. For example, the bath at Khirbat al-Mafjar, near Jericho, was a monumental building decorated with lavish frescos, mosaics, and carved stuccos in the Greco-Roman style. But no city was as famous as Baghdad for the number, the quality and the richness of its baths. An eleventh-century author, Hilal al-Sabi, even claimed that the city hosted 60,000 of them!
Bathers visited steam rooms and pools in which the water was set at different temperatures, stimulating the flow of blood and cleaning the body of its impurities through sweat. Hammams were single-sex institutions, with men and women having separate bathhouses or bathing times. They were nonetheless one of the few places where people from different social groups and religious communities could meet to relax and socialize. Poetry contests and commercial, political, and diplomatic discussions were common in these steamy confines.