What is Hammam (Turkish bath)?

If you have been to Turkey, you have definitely come across what they call Hammam, which is also called Turkish bath in this country. In Turkey, it can not be avoided, but here at home, it has also slowly begun to flourish after Turkey has been a popular travel destination for many years.

What is a Turkish bath?

A Turkish bath or a hammam bath is a bath that aims to cleanse the body outside and inside. In other parts of the world, similar baths can have the same names, and it is thus reminiscent in many ways of, e.g., steam bath, Russian bath, and sauna, which are all very well known as well.

The big difference is that a Turkish hammam bath focuses on the use of water rather than steam to cleanse the body. Roughly speaking, a hammam consists of 3 phases:

Body warming (sauna)

Scrub

Massage

Each phase has its effect on the cleansing of the body, and subsequently, you feel extraordinarily comfortable.

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The history of the bath

It is definitely not a new thing to take a hammam bath, and it is actually not something the Turks have invented either. It is a bath that has been developed over many years, and the same has its roots all the way back to ancient Greece where public baths with hot water were made, to get a general better hygiene and cleanliness in the cities.

This was later done by the Romans, who developed the concept and made huge heated bathing facilities, where it was not just about washing, but just as much about socializing, fun, dining, sports, and more. These bathing establishments were in many ways the focal point of the Roman Empire for many years, but when it began to disintegrate, the culture was taken to the Middle East and here Turkey.

In the Middle East, the belief was Islam, which is why the bath was once again modified to suit the Islamic faith. It was not possible to bathe men and women together nor to bathe in the same water as your neighbor. Therefore, it changed to having to bathe in running water from a sink or a tub. It quickly became a ritual to take a hammam bath before prayer in the mosque to get clean, which is why hammam bathers came to lie next to mosques.

In time, a hammam bath in Turkey and the Middle East became the same as it had been in the Roman Empire, where it was as much about socializing as it was about getting clean. Today, the hammam bath is not as traditional as it used to be, but it is still something many Turks do weekly.