Ottoman Hammams and Bathing

From the fourteenth through the nineteenth century, Ottoman hammams linked water and wood-fired heat to a sequence of changing, warming and washing rooms. A sixteenth-century double bath in Istanbul, now in Turkey, and records from Eyüp in 1735 and Istanbul in 1766 show how bathing involved gendered access, specialized service and distinct property rights.

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Heat, water and the route through the bath

At the rear of a typical Ottoman bath, the külhan (furnace room) contained the fire and stood beside the kazan, the water tank. Wood burned in the furnace to heat the tank and produce hot smoke. In the sixteenth-century bath at Istanbul’s Süleymaniye Hospital, researchers describe a hypocaust, an underfloor heating system: smoke circulated beneath the floors of the bathing rooms, then rose through flues in the walls and left by chimneys. The stoker, or külhancı, kept both the hot-water and room-heating system supplied with fuel.

Water could arrive from a city supply or be lifted from a well. In Istanbul, baths generally used municipal water, but some large buildings relied on broad wells and waterwheels. The Beyazıt complex and Ayşekadın Hamam are examples of baths whose water was drawn by a wheel. These public water arrangements shaped how a bath supplied its rooms each day.

Visitors entered the camekân, a usually cool changing and resting hall with benches around its walls. From there they passed into the ılıklık, a warm transition room, before a low, narrow doorway led into the sıcaklık, the hot washing chamber. That doorway helped keep heat in the hottest room. In many plans, the center held a raised göbek taşı, where bathers warmed themselves and sweated; smaller halvet cells around it offered more enclosed washing spaces. A kurna, or wall basin, supplied water to pour over the body. Except at natural thermal baths, the usual Ottoman arrangement was washing by ladling or pouring water rather than bathing in a large shared pool.

The sixteenth-century Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hammam in Istanbul, commissioned by Hürrem Sultan, wife of Süleyman I, and designed by architect Mimar Sinan, placed its men’s and women’s sections end to end. The arrangement gave each group its own sequence of rooms, but it was known for heating poorly. Builders commonly placed the two sections close together and beside the shared furnace to reduce heat loss. Here, the placement of the rooms affected both gendered access and the cost of keeping the building warm.

Attendants, services and payment

Workers divided the practical tasks. In men’s baths, a tellak washed and scrubbed customers with soap and a kese, an exfoliating mitt; regulations also describe head shaving and other grooming. The TDV encyclopedia identifies natırs as attendants in women’s baths. A külhancı stoked the furnace, while other staff handled cleaning, reception and supplies. Towels and wrappers were washed and dried at the bath, sometimes over a brazier, a portable metal pan used to hold burning fuel.

A 1735 register for Eyüp, a district of Istanbul, lists 79 bath workers: 46 tellak, 17 natır, 10 stokers and six workers in other posts. Historian Saim Yörük interprets the registered natırs as men responsible for customers’ clothes and shoes. The register records no women as natırs. Yörük also reads the register’s bilâ-dirlik notation to mean that listed tellaks and natırs had no fixed income from the bath owner and relied on customer tips.

Ottoman regulations also specified what tellaks and natırs owed customers, the services they performed and the fees attached to them. The rules linked a worker’s assigned task to a customer’s payment, while the Eyüp register shows tips as a distinct source of earnings. Visitors used a peştamal, a cloth wrapper, towels, a washing bowl and nalın, wooden platform shoes that kept feet off wet floors. The Metropolitan Museum’s collection includes a nineteenth-century bath towel and a pair of hammam shoes made with wood, mother-of-pearl, velvet and metal-wrapped thread. These examples show how practical bathing equipment could also be elaborately finished.

Gendered visits and social use

Bath access followed more than one pattern. Many Istanbul market baths were çifte hamam, double baths with separate men’s and women’s sections. A single bath might instead open to women during the day and men at night. The first model gave customers separate rooms; the second shifted access to the same rooms by time of day.

A bath visit could be a social occasion as well as a wash. Descriptions of Ottoman social life place conversation and recreation alongside bathing, and women’s baths could serve as meeting places where mothers discussed possible brides for their marriage-age sons. The visit’s setting mattered: customers rested in the cool hall, moved through the warm and hot rooms, and could spend time with companions between washing services.

Endowments and business rights

A 1766 survey of Istanbul public baths counted 195 establishments and recorded each bath’s location, its relationship to an endowed foundation or private owner, rental income, gedik rights holders and tenants. A waqf was an endowment whose property income supported a designated religious or charitable purpose. In eighteenth-century Istanbul, a gedik was a bundle of rights and obligations associated with an artisan’s or trader’s business. The register’s separate listings show how a building’s ownership, business rights and day-to-day tenancy could involve different people.