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EXPLANATION

What follows is the draft of a section to replace that headed "Turkish baths in the Western world" on Hammam showing: (a) that in Western Europe there were no Islamic hammams derived from their use as facilities for ritual pre-prayer ablutions until the beginning of the 20th century when one was built to meet the needs of immigrants from the Maghreb to France; (b) that the burgeoning late 20th century and the 21st century hammams copy to a limited extent the interiors of the traditional hammam but, though they might not be recognisable as traditional hammams, they are their only expanding continuation.

Hammams in Western Europe

Aside from Al-Andalus (the mainly Spanish and Portuguese parts of Europe which were Muslim ruled until 1492) modern Western Europe has no legacy of historic hammams. Nevertheless, derivatively named Hummums existed in London's Covent Garden in the first half of the 18th century. Sweating and bathing facilities were located there for some part of that period and, at other times, coffee houses, hotels, and houses of ill repute (bagnios) merged with, or replaced them, until a major fire destroyed them in 1768. But there have been no historic hammam structures in London which could have been considered part of the Islamic hammam tradition.

The British Isles in the 19th century

Madden in Syrian Costume

Edward William Lane

English readers in the 19th century were not ignorant of the existence of hammams, and there was no shortage of contemporary accounts describing what they were and how travellers were fascinated by them. Authors such as Richard Robert Madden (in 1829), Edward William Lane (in 1836), and, in lighter vein, William Makepeace Thackeray (in 1846), had described them in their books.

Thackeray wrote with the intention of entertaining his readers by mocking what those people have over there. But even the scholarly works of Madden and Lane were educating us about their customs with the implication that they were strange customs. Neither scholar thought to suggest any practical lessons on personal hygiene which their readers might learn from these accounts. Two authors tried to rectify this omission.

In 1828, a year before Madden wrote his book, an anonymous (and still unknown) author self-published a quite different work, Strictures on the personal cleanliness of the English, with a description of the hammams of the Turks, &c. in a limited edition of 250 copies. It was distributed by the radical publisher of The Republican, Richard Carlile, who had realised that in Strictures the author was not denigrating the Turks; on the contrary, he was positioning them as a people to be emulated, by describing customs which his readers should adopt themselves. The author wrote that he had wanted,

to erect baths at the expense of government in different parts of London, after the manner of the Roman thermæ, publicly endowed like hospitals for the use of the people,

and that in 1818 he had unsuccessfully tried to interest George III in his project.

David Urquhart

The second author was David Urquhart, a Scottish diplomat and sometime MP for Stafford, whose travel book, The Pillars of Hercules, was an account of his travels in Morocco and Spain in 1848. Two chapters described the hammams of Morocco and Turkey in considerable detail, and Urquhart became an advocate of what were then known in the English-speaking world as "Turkish baths" because those most often described in travel books were located in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire.

Dr Richard Barter

The book had no direct impact on the construction of a hammam until it was read in 1856 by Dr Richard Barter, an Irish physician and hydropathist. Barter, to the consternation of orthodox hydropathists, was already using the vapour bath cabinet therapeutically at St Ann's, his hydropathic establishment near Cork. He immediately realised that the bath described by Urquhart was a major improvement on his vapour cabinets. He contacted Urquhart and offered him men, money, and materials, "besides a number of patients upon whom experiments might be made", if he would visit St Ann's, and build one for their use.

This first experimental beehive-shaped bath was unsuccessful. Although Urquhart was experienced in using hammams he had no experience of building them, and it had not been possible to heat the air to the required high temperature. This is the only documented 19th century attempt to build a hammam in Western Europe, after which the attempt was abandoned.

Instead, Dr Barter sent his architect, also named Richard Barter but unrelated to him, to Rome to study how the ancient thermae were constructed there. On his return he designed and supervised the building of what has become known as the first Victorian Turkish bath—a hot-air bath using hot dry air instead of the moist air of the hammam. Barter knew from his experience with vapour baths that heat was an effective therapeutic agent, especially for complaints such as gout and rheumatism. He also knew that the human body can withstand higher temperatures when exposed to dry air rather than wet vaporous air. He called his bath "The Improved Turkish bath".

Back in England the following year (1857), Urquhart helped build the first such bath in Manchester. As a Turcophile, he argued strongly for calling the new bath a Turkish bath, though others unsuccessfully maintained that it should be called an Anglo-Roman bath, or as in Germany and elsewhere, the Irish, or Irish-Roman bath.

But all future 19th century hot-air baths in the British Isles were either based on the Irish-Roman model or later, and then only occasionally towards the end of the century, on the Russian steam bath. After Barter's initial attempt, the hammam is not recorded as appearing again in Western Europe until after World War I.

France, post World War I

According to a list on Wikipedia, the only mosques in France prior to the 20th century had been in Septimania, that part of the country which, under Muslim rule, had been within Al-Andalus. So, as in the British Isles, there is no legacy of historic Islamic hammams associated with pre-prayer ritual cleansing.

The Mosque of the Bois de Vincennes, a temporary mosque, was built in 1916 on the outskirts of Paris for the use of Muslim soldiers during World War I and in the months immediately afterwards. This was later demolished, and it is not known whether it included a hammam.

Grande Mosquée de Paris, rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, 2016. The separate entrance through a tearoom leads to the hammam (on the left)

Otherwise, the first modern mosque in France, La Grande Mosquée de Paris et Institut musulman, was not opened till 1926. Covering an area of 7,500 square metres, it also includes a madrasa (school), library, and conference hall. Beyond Moorish gardens, is an annexe housing a hammam and tearoom with a direct entrance to the street.

The building commemorates the many thousand Muslims who died fighting for France during World War I. It was built by architects Robert Fournez, Maurice Mantout, and Charles Heubès, following the plans of Maurice Tranchant de Lunel, General Inspector of Fine Arts in Morocco. Constructed in reinforced concrete, the decorative green tiles, earthenware, mosaics, and wrought iron work come from Maghreb countries, and were fitted by craft workers from there. In 1983, the building was inscribed in the Base Mérimée, the database of French monumental and architectural heritage, created and maintained by the French Ministry of Culture.

The hammam was originally open at separate times for men and women. It can be seen as it was in the mid 1960s, because it appears in a scene in Gérard Oury's French-British comedy film La Grande Vadrouille. Bathers are shown being served drinks while reclining on long continuous cushioned platforms which are divided into cubicles by bead curtains. The cool wading pool in one of the hot rooms also appears.

Some time after a major refurbishment in the 2010s, the hammam's admission policy changed. It appears that the mosque authorities now lease it to a private company which runs it, for women only, as a wellness centre with beauty treatments.

Europe, post World War II

La Bastide des Bains, rue Sainte, Marseille (France)

The second half of the 20th century saw a new, war-weary, air-travelling holiday generation return from Turkey and other countries where they had discovered the hammam, not as part of a specifically Islamic culture, but as what had become, as a result of diminishing local use, a significant tourist leisure attraction.

It was not long before baths based on the internal appearance of the hammam, with its central room and göbek tasi (belly-stone), started appearing in European hotels, health spas, and even as standalone hammam establishments. But the history of the modern European hammam, as a wellbeing and beauty treatment feature, is yet to be recorded or studied.

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