page_title: Hookah
section_title: Bangladesh
hierarchical_section_title: Hookah / Culture / South Asia / Bangladesh
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of I'tisam-ud-Din (1730-1800)
context_page_description: A hookah, also known as the qalyān, is a single- or multi-stemmed instrument for vaporizing and smoking flavored cannabis, tobacco, or sometimes opium, whose vapor or smoke is passed through a water basin—often glass-based—before inhalation.
  Health risks of smoking through a hookah include exposure to toxic chemicals that are not filtered out by the water and risk of infectious disease when hookahs are shared.
  There are two theories regarding the origin of the hookah. The first is that following the introduction of tobacco to medieval India by the Jesuits, the waterpipe was invented by Abu’l-Fath Gilani, a Persian physician of Akbar, in the Indian city of Fatehpur Sikri during Mughal India; the hookah spread from the Indian subcontinent to Persia first, where the mechanism was modified to its current shape, and then to the Near East. Alternatively, it could originate in the Safavid dynasty of Persia, from where it eventually spread to the east into the Indian subcontinent during that time.
  The word hookah is a derivative of "huqqa", a Hindustani word, of Arabic origin.
context_section_description: The hookah (Bengali: হুক্কা, romanized: hukka) has been a traditional smoking instrument in Bangladesh, particularly among the old Bengali Muslim zamindar gentry. However, flavoured shisha was introduced in the early 2000s. Hookah lounges spread quite quickly between 2008–2011 in urban areas and became popular among young people as well as middle-aged people as a relaxation method. There have been allegations of a government crack-down on hookah bars to prevent illicit drug usage. The hookah is also an electoral symbol for a candidate used first in the 1973 Bangladeshi general election. In the biography of Mountstuart Elphinstone, it is mentioned that James Achilles Kirkpatrick had a hookah-bardar (hookah servant/preparer) during his time in the Indian subcontinent. Kirkpatrick's hookah servant is said to have robbed and cheated Kirkpatrick, making his way to England and stylising himself as the Prince of Sylhet. The man, presumably of Sylheti origin, was waited upon by the Prime Minister of Great Britain William Pitt the Younger, and then dined with the Duke of York before presenting himself in front of George III.
caption: I'tisam-ud-Din, a Bengali Muslim from the 18th century, smoking hukka
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