page_title: Hookah
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Hookah / History
context_page_description: A hookah is a type of glass water pipe used to smoke tobacco, or special hookah-tobacco called "shisha". It can also be used for smoking herbal fruits.
  The hookah gained popularity under the reign of the Ottoman Dynasty. A hookah operates by water filtration and indirect heat.
context_section_description: The hookah has origins in Arabia, Persia, Turkey, India and ancient China. Ancient Persian paintings depict people smoking hookahs. In the early 19th century, Hookahs became popular with rich men, who often smoked them wearing smoking caps or fezzes and smoking jackets.
  The more colloquial terms "hubble-bubble" and "hubbly-bubbly" may be used in the region surrounding the Red Sea.
  The archaic form of this latter Indian name hookah is most commonly used in English for historical reasons. It was in India that many English-speakers first sampled the effects of the water pipe. The writer William Hickey wrote in his Memoirs that shortly after his arrival in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India in 1775:
  “
  The most highly-dressed and splendid hookah was prepared for me. I tried it, but did not like it. As after several trials I still found it disagreeable, I with much gravity requested to know whether it was indispensably necessary that I should become a smoker, which was answered with equal gravity, 'Undoubtedly it is, for you might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. Here everybody uses a hookah, and it is impossible to get on without'.....[I] have frequently heard men declare they would much rather be deprived of their dinner than their hookah.”
caption: An Egyptian hookah (shisha)
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