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84-406: Features Types Types Features Clothing Genres Art music Folk Prose Islamic Poetry Genres Forms Arabic prosody National literatures of Arab States Concepts Texts Fictional Arab people South Arabian deities A sabil or sebil ( Arabic : سبيل , romanized :  sabīl ; Turkish : sebil )

168-737: A chronogram using the Abjad numbers to date the construction. Historically, during holidays and major celebrations, some sebils also distributed a sweetened fruit drink known as " sherbet " or another fruit juice. Until the spread of in-house plumbing by the end of the 20th century, sebils and other fountains were essential for the daily life of the inhabitants of Istanbul. In present-day Istanbul, many sebils have either been abandoned or serve other functions such as commercial shops. Some have been restored as part of wider historical architectural complexes, but still do not serve their original purpose. Islamic literature The definition of Islamic literature

252-456: A charitable endowment, an Islamic waqf , provided or set up by the patron who commissioned the building. Endowing money for the construction of sabils was considered an act of piety, and the construction of many sabils was considered the hallmark of a beneficent ruler. During the formative period of early Islamic society (seventh century onward), the Islamic world inherited the water traditions of

336-422: A cold room to progressively hotter rooms. Men are usually washed by male bath attendants and women by female attendants before they are given a massage. Some details of the process vary from region to region, such as the presence or absence of pools where visitors can immerse themselves in water. In more conservative areas women are less likely to bathe in just their underwear while in areas where hammams have become

420-811: A decline in their use – although to varying degrees depending on regional cultural practices. In many regions hammams have been abandoned, demolished or converted to serve as commercial buildings or cultural venues. Some have been converted into museums or art galleries , as with the examples of the Bayezid II Hamam in Istanbul , which now houses a hammam museum, and the Davud Pasha (or Daut Pasha) Hamam in Skopje , North Macedonia . In Turkey many historic hammams continue to operate either for locals or for tourists; in some cases this has led to neglected historic hammams such as

504-416: A hammam after childbirth or illness. However, even al-Ghazali thought it admissible for men to prohibit their wives or sisters from using the hammam. For al-Ghazali the main point of contention surrounding hammams was nakedness, and he warned that overt nakedness was to be avoided ("… he should shield it from the sight of others and second, guard against the touch of others.") His writing focused especially on

588-565: A number of tales are known in Europe as "Arabian Nights", despite existing in no Arabic manuscript. This compilation has been influential in the West since it was first translated by Antoine Galland in the 18th century. Many imitations were written, especially in France. In the 12th century, Ibn Tufail wrote the novel Hayy ibn Yaqdhan , or Philosophus Autodidactus ( The Self-Taught Philosopher ), as

672-558: A practical/religious provision as well as for aesthetic effects. Hammams (public bathhouses), inherited from the Roman thermae , continued to be an essential public facility in Islamic cities in addition to public fountains. At the same time, water was featured in palace and garden design as early as the Umayyad Caliphate (7th–8th centuries). It played a role in formal gardens (such as Persian gardens ) and in palace architecture such as in

756-538: A prominent type of construction in the " Tulip period " during the reign of Ahmed III in the early 18th century, which saw an emergence of the "Rococo" Ottoman architectural style, and during the later "Baroque" phase of Ottoman architecture that followed. The Fountain of Ahmed III , next to Topkapı Palace and the Hagia Sophia , is one of the most famous and elaborate examples. Like other public monuments, they were often inscribed with Ottoman Turkish verses that formed

840-460: A response to al-Ghazali 's The Incoherence of the Philosophers . The novel, which features a protagonist who has been spontaneously generated on an island, demonstrates the harmony of religion and philosophy and the virtues of an inquiring soul. In the same century, Ibn al-Nafis wrote the novel Theologus Autodidactus ( The Self-Taught Theologian ) in response to Ibn Tufail’s work; the novel

924-579: A source of revenue for the upkeep of other institutions such as mosques. In the 11th century the Seljuk Empire conquered much of Anatolia from the Byzantine Empire , eventually leading to the complete conquest of the remnants of the old empire in the 15th century. During those centuries of war, peace, alliance, trade and competition, these intermixing cultures (Eastern Roman, Islamic Persian and Turkic ) had tremendous influence on each other. Later

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1008-496: A standard feature of the religious and funerary complexes built by the Mamluk elites and also came to be typically accompanied by a kuttab (a space offering primary education, especially reading of the Qur'an). These "sabil-kuttab" structures were often located at the corner of the building complex along a busy road or at an intersection. The sabil was located at ground or street level (where it

1092-607: A strong Eastern Roman bath culture, with the Baths of Zeuxippus constituting one early example. Ottoman architects expanded on the experience of Byzantine architects to create particularly well-balanced designs with greater symmetry and regularity in the arrangement of space than could be seen in hammams in other parts of the Muslim world. Some of the city's oldest monumental hammams are the Tahtakale Hamam (probably built right after 1454),

1176-474: A strong culture of public bathing, historical texts mention the existence of bathhouses in the 10th century as well as the use of hot springs for therapeutic purposes; however, there has been relatively little archeological investigation to document the early presence and development of hammams in this region. Muslims retained many of the main elements of the classical bathhouses while leaving out functions which were less relevant to their practices. For example,

1260-635: A tolerant, intellectual island where I can deal with Dostoyevsky and Sartre, both great influences for me". The International Prize for Arabic Fiction is a literary prize managed in association with the Booker Prize Foundation in London and supported by the Emirates Foundation in Abu Dhabi . The prize is for prose fiction by Arabic authors. Each year, the winner of the prize receives US$ 50,000 and

1344-429: A vowel followed by a single-rhyming letter. The most common form of Persian poetry comes in the ghazal, a love-themed short poem made of seven to twelve verses and composed in the monorhyme scheme. Urdu poetry is known for its richness, multiple genres, traditions of live public performances through Mushairas , Qawwali and Ghazal singing in modern times. Ferdowsi 's Shahnameh , the national epic poem of Iran ,

1428-457: A water basin or fountain. Water also had other religious or spiritual symbolic importance, being associated with Paradise (heaven) and being used in the Qur'an as a symbol of Creation. The Qur'an describes water as a blessing from God ( Allah ), and some hadiths exhort Muslims to offer water to thirsty humans and animals. As a result, water became an important element in Islamic architecture, both as

1512-450: A woman or a man can make someone included or excluded. Therefore, they represent a departure from the public sphere in which one is physically exposed amongst other women or men. This declaration of sexuality merely by being nude makes hammams a site of gendered expression. One exception to this gender segregation is the presence of young boys who often accompany their mothers until they reach the age of five or six when they switch to attending

1596-773: Is a defense of the rationality of prophetic revelation. The protagonists of both these narratives were feral children (Hayy in Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and Kamil in Theologus Autodidactus ) who were autodidactic (self-taught) and living in seclusion on a desert island . A Latin translation of Philosophus Autodidactus first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger, followed by an English translation by Simon Ockley in 1708, as well as German and Dutch translations. Robert Boyle 's own philosophical novel set on an island, The Aspiring Naturalist , may have been inspired by

1680-476: Is a matter of debate, with some definitions categorizing anything written in a majority-Muslim nation as "Islamic" so long as the work can be appropriated into an Islamic framework, even if the work is not authored by a Muslim. By this definition, categories like Indonesian literature , Somali literature , Pakistani literature , and Persian literature would all qualify as Islamic literature. A second definition focuses on all works authored by Muslims, regardless of

1764-558: Is a mythical and heroic retelling of Persian history . Amir Arsalan was also a popular mythical Persian story. Beginning in the 15th century Bengali poetry , originating depicts the themes of internal conflict with the nafs , Islamic cosmology , historical battles, love and existential ideas concerning one’s relationship with society. The historical works of Shah Muhammad Sagir , Alaol , Abdul Hakim , Syed Sultan and Daulat Qazi mixed Bengali folk poetry with Perso-Arabian stories and themes, and are considered an important part of

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1848-649: Is a noun meaning "bath", "bathroom", "bathhouse", "swimming pool", etc. derived from the Arabic triconsonantal root H-M-M ( ح م م ) which yields meanings related to heat or heating. From Arabic حمّام , it passed on to Persian ( حمام ) and Turkish ( hamam ). In English, the inaccurate term "Turkish bath" is also used to refer to hammams. This stems from the tendency of historical Western writers to conflate ethnic and religious terms by referring to Muslims as "Turk" and because they presented hammams largely as an Ottoman cultural feature. The first recorded use of

1932-625: Is a prominent feature in the culture of the Muslim world and was inherited from the model of the Roman thermae . Muslim bathhouses or hammams were historically found across the Middle East , North Africa , al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia , i.e. Spain and Portugal ), Central Asia , the Indian subcontinent , and in Southeastern Europe under Ottoman rule . In Islamic cultures the significance of

2016-603: Is a small kiosk in the Islamic architectural tradition where water is freely dispensed to members of the public by an attendant behind a grilled window. The term is sometimes also used to refer to simple unmanned fountains with a tap for drinking water, though other names often exist for such fountains (such as çesme in Turkish). Historically, sabils are structures of both civic and religious importance in Muslim cities, most prominently in

2100-487: Is also required before or after sexual intercourse. Knowing that, May Telmissany , a professor at the University of Ottawa , argues that the image of a hyper-sexualised woman leaving the hammam is an Orientalist way of looking at things that sees leaving or attending the hammam as an indicator of sexual behaviour. Most hammams expect their clients to undress down to a modesty garment or loincloth , before proceeding from

2184-630: Is one of the Five Pillars of Islam and it is customary to perform ablutions before praying. The two Islamic forms of ablution are ghusl , a full-body cleansing, and wudu , a cleansing of the face, hands, and feet. In the absence of water, cleansing with pure soil or sand is also permissible. Mosques always provide a place to wash, but hammams are often located nearby for deeper cleansing. Many are actually part of mosque complexes. Hammams, particularly in Morocco, evolved from their Roman origins to meet

2268-415: Is used both metaphorically and literally in multiple instances in the Qur'an. Its use as an architectural term for a public water building or fountain likely derives from a more abstract meaning it acquired to refer to general acts or provisions done for the sake of God (such as a charitable act). A typical sabil was built over an underground cistern which supplied the water for distribution. In some cases,

2352-410: The Arabic language and Arabic literature ; science ; and medicine . Three of the prizes are widely considered as the most prestigious awards in the Muslim world. Turkish bath A hammam ( Arabic : حمّام , romanized :  ḥammām ), also often called a Turkish bath by Westerners, is a type of steam bath or a place of public bathing associated with the Islamic world . It

2436-643: The Kılıç Ali Pasa Hamamı and the Hürrem Sultan Hamamı being renovated and returned to their original function, while others were abandoned or repurposed. In Morocco, many hammams continue to serve locals in historic cities such as Fes and Marrakesh , where they are especially useful to the urban poor residing in the old cities ( medina s). In many other regions, however, hammams have become obsolete and have either been abandoned or converted to other uses. In Iran, some baths continue to operate in

2520-651: The Mahmut Pasha Hamam (built in 1466), and the Bayezid II Hamam (built some time between 1500 and 1507). The monumental hammams designed by the 16th-century Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan (1489–1588), such as the Çemberlitaş Hamamı , the Süleymaniye Hamam (in the complex of the Süleymaniye Mosque ), and the Haseki Hürrem Sultan Hamam , are major examples of hammams that were built later in

2604-626: The Muslim culture of Bengal. Ginans are devotional hymns or poems recited by Shia Ismaili Muslims . Dante Alighieri 's Divine Comedy , considered the greatest epic of Italian literature , derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology : the Hadith and the Kitab al-Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before as Liber scalae Machometi , "The Book of Muhammad's Ladder") concerning Muhammad 's ascension to Heaven, and

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2688-1005: The Ottomans became prolific patrons of hammams. Since they were social centres as well as baths, they were built in almost every city across their European, Asian, and African territories. The Ottomans were thus responsible for introducing hammams to much of eastern and central Europe, where many still exist today in various states of restoration or disrepair. Such Turkish baths are found as far as Bosnia and Herzegovina , Greece , and Hungary . Many early Ottoman hammams survive in Bursa and Edirne , as well as in Eastern Europe and Anatolia , but hammams became even more numerous and architecturally ambitious in Constantinople (Istanbul) , thanks to its royal patronage, its large population and its access to plentiful water. The city's Greek inhabitants had retained

2772-705: The Tanzimat period of the 19th century. Cultural Muslim poetry is influenced by both Islamic metaphors and local poetic forms of various regions including the Arabic tradition of Qasida actually beginning since ancient pre-Islamic times. Some Sufi traditions are known for their devotional poetry . Arab poetry influenced the rest of Muslim poetry world over. Likewise Persian poetry too shared its influences beyond borders of modern-day Iran particularly in south Asian languages like Urdu Bengali etc.. Genres present in classical Persian poetry vary and are determined by rhyme, which consists of

2856-516: The category of Islamic law dealing with etiquette , or a gesture of greeting . According to Issa J. Boullata, Adab material had been growing in volume in Arabia before Islam and had been transmitted orally for the most part. With the advent of Islam, its growth continued and it became increasingly diversified. It was gradually collected and written down in books, ayrab literature other material adapted from Persian, Sanskrit, Greek, and other tongues as

2940-470: The expansion of Arab Muslim rule over much of the Middle East and North Africa in the 7th and 8th centuries, the emerging Islamic societies were quick to adapt the bathhouse to their own needs. Its importance to Muslim society lay in the religious requirement to perform ablutions ( wudu and ghusl ) before praying and because of the general Islamic emphasis on physical and spiritual purity , although

3024-521: The late antiquity Mediterranean world (formerly under Roman and Byzantine rule) and Iranian world (formerly under Sasanian rule). Islamic society developed existing methods into new ones or revived neglected ones. In addition to the regular water needs for drinking and for agriculture, water also had an important religions role in the ablutions or purification ritual required before prayer in Islam , such that even early mosques were equipped with either

3108-531: The 10th century many places started to provide separate hours (or separate facilities) for men and women. The hammam then took on an important role in women's social life as one of the few public spaces where they could gather and socialise apart from men. Some hammams were privately owned or formed parts of palaces and mansions, but in many cases they were civic or charitable institutions which formed part of larger religious/civic complexes. Such complexes were governed by waqf agreements, and hammams often acted as

3192-425: The 20th century. A massage in a hammam is likely to involve not just vigorous muscle kneading, but also joint cracking - "not so much a tender working of the flesh as a pummelling, a cracking of joints, a twisting of limbs". Hammams aiming for a tourist clientele are likely to also offer an array of different types of massage similar to what might be offered in a spa. Arab hammams are gendered spaces where being

3276-584: The 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize. In 1989, in an interview following the fatwa against him for alleged blaspheme in his novel The Satanic Verses , Rushdie said that he was in a sense a lapsed Muslim, though "shaped by Muslim culture more than any other", and a student of Islam. Oman author Jokha Alharthi (b.1978) was the first Arabic-language writer to win the Man Booker International Prize in 2019 with her novel Celestial Bodies . The book focuses on three Omani sisters and

3360-510: The 9th century most scholars were no longer interested in debating the validity of hammams, although it continued to be seen with suspicion in some conservative circles. The earliest known Islamic hammams were built in Syria and Jordan during the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) as part of palaces and desert castles at Qusayr 'Amra , Hammam al-Sarah , Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi , and Khirbat al-Majfar . Shortly after this period, archaeology reveals

3444-466: The Arab world and beyond, is responsible for appointing six new judges each year, and for the overall management of the prize. The King Faisal Prize ( Arabic : جائزة الملك فيصل ) is an annual award sponsored by King Faisal Foundation presented to "dedicated men and women whose contributions make a positive difference". The foundation awards prizes in five categories: Service to Islam ; Islamic studies ;

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3528-557: The Arabic language spread with the expansion of Islam's political dominion in the world. It included stories and saying from the Bible, the Qur’ān, and the Ḥadīth. Eventually, the heritage of adab became so large that philologists and other scholars had to make selections, therefore, each according to his interests and his plans to meet the needs of particular readers, such as students seeking learning and cultural refinement, or persons associated with

3612-455: The Islamic state such as viziers, courtiers, chancellors, judges, and government secretaries seeking useful knowledge and success in polished quarters. Key early adab anthologies were the al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt of Al-Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbī (d. c. 780 CE); Abū Tammām 's Dīwān al-Ḥamāsa (d. 846 CE); ʿUyūn al-Akhbār , compiled by Ibn Qutayba (d. 889 CE); and Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih 's al-ʿIqd al-Farīd (d. 940 CE). Some scholar's studies attribute

3696-462: The Quran and hadith. An alternate definition states that Islamic literature is any literature about Muslims and their pious deeds. Some academics have moved beyond evaluations of differences between Islamic and non-Islamic literature to studies such as comparisons of the novelization of various contemporary Islamic literatures and points of confluence with political themes, such as nationalism . Over

3780-413: The appropriate forms of conduct for many aspects of Muslim life and death. One of the volumes, entitled The Mysteries of Purity , details the proper technique for performing ablutions before prayer and the major ablution ( ghusil ) after anything which renders it necessary, such as the emission of semen. For al-Ghazali, the hammam is a primarily male institution, and he cautions that women should only enter

3864-513: The beginning of the 19th century but only eight were still in business by the start of the 21st century, with many others abandoned or neglected. In the former European territories of the Ottoman Empire such as Greece and the Balkans , many hammams became defunct or were neglected in modern times, although some have now been restored and turned into historic monuments or cultural centres. Prayer

3948-695: The best known works of fiction from the Islamic world is The Book of One Thousand and One Nights ( Arabian Nights ), a compilation of many earlier folk tales set in a frame story of being told serially by the Persian Queen Scheherazade . The compilation took form in the 10th century and reached its final form by the 14th century; the number and type of tales have varied from one manuscript to another. Many other Arabian fantasy tales were often called "Arabian Nights" when translated into English , regardless of whether they appeared in any version of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights or not, and

4032-414: The centuries, there have been numerous bibliographies and biographical dictionaries attempting to list authors of Islamic literature, including India -born scholar Maulana Mahmud Hasan Khan of Rajasthan , who passed away in 1946 and whose 60-volume M'ojam-ul-Musannifin (Dictionary of Authors) in Arabic provides the biographical sketches of some 40,000 writers from all over the Islamic world. Among

4116-665: The cities of the Ottoman Empire , based in Istanbul , and of the Mamluk Empire , based in Cairo . They were built at crossroads , in the middle of city squares, and on the outside of mosques and other religious complexes to provide drinking water for travelers and to assist ritual ablutions before prayer. The word sabil comes from the Arabic verb root sabala (سبل) meaning "to let fall, drop, to let hang down, to close eyes or to shed tear". Sabil initially meant "road" or "path" and

4200-607: The continued popular appreciation of its pleasures in a region where they had already existed for centuries. He also notes that there was initially strong opposition from many Islamic scholars ( ulama ) , especially Maliki scholars, to the use of hammams. These scholars viewed hammams as unnecessary for full-body ablutions ( ghusl ) and questioned whether public bathing spaces could be sufficiently clean to achieve proper purification . They also worried that spaces for collective bathing could become spaces for illicit sexual activity. Nevertheless, this opposition progressively faded and by

4284-580: The country's history of slavery. The 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature was given to the Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006), "who, through works rich in nuance—now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous—has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind". He was the first Muslim author to receive such a prize. With regard to religion Mahfouz describes himself as, "a pious moslem believer". The 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature

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4368-661: The descriptions of Paradise in the Qur'an. The oldest sabil for which we have a date is in Damascus , Syria , and is dated to 1077–78 CE (570 AH ) according to its inscription, which is well before Ayyubid or Mamluk rule in Egypt and Syria. The earliest (surviving) sabil in Cairo is the one installed by the Mamluk sultan al-Nasir Muhammad at the corner of his father 's monumental hospital-madrasa-mausoleum complex during restorations in 1325–26. As Mamluk architecture developed, sabils became

4452-546: The era of classical Ottoman architecture . When Sultan Mustafa III issued a decree halting the construction of new public baths in the city in 1768, it seems to have resulted in an increase in the number of private hammams among the wealthy and the elites, especially in the Bosphorus suburbs where they built luxurious summer homes. In Iran, many examples of hammams survive from the Safavid period (16th–18th centuries) onward, with

4536-489: The everyday interactions of Moroccans in the hammam. Staats argues that hammams are places where women can feel more at ease than in many other public interactions. In addition, in his work Sexuality in Islam, Abdelwahab Bouhdiba cites the hammam as a place where homosexual encounters in general can take place. He notes that some historians found evidence of hammams as spaces for sexual expression among women, which they believed

4620-564: The existence of Islamic bathhouses across much of the Muslim world, with hammams appearing as far west as Volubilis (itself a former Roman colony) in Morocco during the Idrisid period (late 8th to early 9th centuries). Historical texts and archeological evidence also indicate the existence of hammams in Cordoba and other cities of al-Andalus in the 8th century. In Iran , which did not previously have

4704-620: The famous example of the Alhambra in Spain. How the architectural format of the sabil itself first developed is debated. While water was implicated in architectural design across the Muslim world , the sabil as a recognizable structure with a particular purpose is associated mainly with the Mamluk Sultanate and with the Ottoman Empire , with both Istanbul and Cairo having numerous examples. Its architecture has been argued to draw inspiration from

4788-560: The gender of the visitor) with the use of soap and vigorous rubbing, before ending by washing themselves in warm water. Unlike in Roman or Greek baths, bathers usually wash themselves with running water instead of immersing themselves in standing water since this is a requirement of Islam, though immersion in a pool used to be customary in the hammams of some regions such as Iran . While hammams everywhere generally operate in fairly similar ways, there are some regional differences both in usage and architecture. The word "hammam" ( حَمَّام )

4872-410: The hammam experience such as jewel boxes, gilded soap boxes, mirrors, metal henna bowls, perfume bottles and nalın (wooden or mother-of-pearl clogs that prevented slipping on the wet floor) can now only be seen in museums. Traditionally, the bathhouse masseurs ( Turkish : tellak ) were young men who soaped and scrubbed their clients. However, the tellaks were replaced by adult attendants during

4956-538: The hammam was both religious and civic: it provided for the needs of ritual ablutions but also provided for general hygiene in an era before private plumbing and served other social functions such as offering a gendered meeting place for men and for women. Archeological remains attest to the existence of bathhouses in the Islamic world as early as the Umayyad period (7th–8th centuries) and their importance has persisted up to modern times. Their architecture evolved from

5040-528: The historic city of Isfahan in particular containing many examples. The spread of Muslim rule in the Indian subcontinent also introduced hammams to this region, with many examples surviving in Mughal architecture (16th–19th centuries). Hammams continued to be a vital part of urban life in the Muslim world until the early 20th century when the spread of indoor plumbing in private homes rendered public baths unnecessary for personal hygiene. This has resulted in

5124-481: The historic districts of cities like Isfahan where they continue to serve religious functions, but there is an overall decline in their numbers. Many surviving Iranian examples have been converted to other uses, most notably as restaurants and teahouses . In Damascus , Syria , only thirteen hammams were still operating in 2004, mostly in the old city; many others had been either demolished or repurposed. Cairo in Egypt contained an estimated 77 operational hammams at

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5208-545: The layout of Roman and Greek bathhouses and featured a regular sequence of rooms: an undressing room , a cold room , a warm room , and a hot room . Heat was produced by furnaces which provided hot water and steam , while smoke and hot air was channeled through conduits under the floor . In a modern hammam visitors undress themselves, while retaining some sort of modesty garment or loincloth , and proceed into progressively hotter rooms, inducing perspiration . They are then usually washed by male or female staff (matching

5292-424: The male hammam with their fathers. Women's hammams play a special role in society. Valerie Staats finds that the women's hammams of Morocco serve as a social space where traditional and modern women from urban and rural areas of the country come together, regardless of their religiosity, to bathe and socialise. The bathing regulations laid down by al-Ghazali and other Islamic intellectuals are not usually upheld in

5376-417: The need to avoid touching the penis during bathing and after urination, and wrote that nakedness was decent only when the area between a man's knees and lower stomach was hidden. For women he suggested that only exposure of the face and palms was appropriate. According to al-Ghazali, nakedness in the hammam could incite indecent thoughts and behaviours, hence its controversial nature. In Islam ritual ablution

5460-490: The needs of ritual purification according to Islam. For example, in most Roman-style hammams, there was a cold pool for submersion of the body, a style of bathing that finds less favour with Islam which regards bathing under running water without being fully submerged more appropriate. Al-Ghazali , a prominent Muslim theologian of the 11th century, wrote Revival of the Religious Sciences , a multi-volume work discussing

5544-418: The preserve mainly of tourists there is more likelihood that women will bathe naked. Some hammam complexes contain separate sections for men and women; elsewhere men and women are admitted at different times in which case the hours for women are usually far more limited than those for men. Traditionally hammams, especially those for women, doubled as places of entertainment with dancing and food being shared. It

5628-455: The progression from cold room to hot room was maintained, but it was no longer common practice to take a plunge in cold water after leaving the hot room, nor was exercise incorporated into bathing culture as it was in classical gymnasiums . Likewise, Muslim bathers usually washed themselves in running water rather than immersing themselves in standing water. Although in early Islamic history women did not normally patronise hammams, by around

5712-478: The religion while not believing in a personal connection to God. When asked if he considered himself a Muslim, Pamuk replied: ": "I consider myself a person who comes from a Muslim culture. In any case, I would not say that I'm an atheist. So I'm a Muslim who associates historical and cultural identification with this religion. I do not believe in a personal connection to God; that's where it gets transcendental. I identify with my culture, but I am happy to be living on

5796-410: The religious content or lack thereof within those works. Proponents of the second definition suggest that the Islamic identity of Muslim authors cannot be divorced from the evaluation of their works, even if they did not intend to infuse their works with religious meaning. Still other definitions emphasize works with a focus on Islamic values, or those that focus on events, people, and places mentioned in

5880-516: The role of Islamisation of Muslim individuals and communities, social, cultural and political behavior by legitimization through various genres like Muslim historiographies , Islamic advice literature and other Islamic literature. The British Indian novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie 's (b.1947) second novel, Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two separate occasions, marking

5964-402: The scholar Mohammed Hocine Benkheira has argued that hammams were not in fact necessary for religious purposes in early Islam and that this relationship was partly assumed by later historians. He suggests that the hammam's initial appeal derived at least in part from its convenience for other services (such as shaving ), from its endorsement by some Muslim doctors as a form of therapy, and from

6048-438: The six shortlisted authors receive US$ 10,000 each. The aim of the award is to recognise and reward excellence in contemporary Arabic fiction writing and to encourage wider readership of good-quality Arabic literature in the region and internationally. The prize is also designed to encourage the translation and promotion of Arabic language literature into other major world languages. An independent board of trustees, drawn from across

6132-616: The small but multi-level "sabil-kuttab" structure became a cost-effective option for political elites to offer charitable services to the general population, which in turn helped them publicly display their piety. In 16th century Istanbul , sebils were a symbol of public possession. The attempt to add spigots (taps) was opposed because this was perceived as limiting public access to the blessings of nature. In later centuries, sebils became elaborately decorated structures, either attached to mosque complexes or existing as stand-alone structures, often at busy intersections or street corners. They were

6216-478: The spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi . One term for Islamic literature is al-adab al-islami , or adab . Although today adab denotes literature generally, in earlier times its meaning included all that a well-informed person had to know in order to pass in society as a cultured and refined individual. This meaning started with the basic idea that adab was the socially accepted ethical and moral quality of an urbane and courteous person'; thus adab can also denote

6300-525: The term 'Turkish bath' in English was in 1644. Public bathhouses were a prominent civic and urban institution in Roman and Hellenistic culture and were found throughout the Mediterranean world. They remained important in the cities of the early Byzantine Empire up to around the mid-6th century, after which the construction of new bathhouses declined and existing ones were gradually abandoned. Following

6384-420: The water drawn from the cistern then ran down a decorative carved marble panel called a salsabil , which may also have served the purpose of aerating the water as it came from the cistern. An attendant collected the water and distributed it to passers-by outside the sabil, usually through a window with a metal grille . This service was free to members of the public, and was paid for by the revenues or funds of

6468-530: The water from the cistern often trickled over an ornamental carved marble panel (known as a salsabil ) before being collected by the sabil's attendant. During the Mamluk period, such structures were almost always integrated into a larger building, and were rarely ever built as separate or stand-alone structures. The earliest free-standing or independent sabil-kuttab was the one built by Sultan Qaytbay in 1479 (the Sabil-Kuttab of Qaytbay ) along Saliba Street . It

6552-511: The work. Beginning in the 19th century, fictional novels and short stories became popular within the literary circles of the Ottoman Empire . An early example, the romance novel Taaşuk-u Tal'at ve Fitnat (تعشق طلعت و فطنت; "Tal'at and Fitnat in Love"), was published in 1872 by Şemsettin Sami . Other important novels of the period included Muhayyelât by Ali Aziz Efendi , which consists of three parts and

6636-505: Was a result of the universality of nudity in these spaces. Hammams have also been associated with male homosexuality over the centuries and up to the present day. Features Types Types Features Clothing Genres Art music Folk Prose Islamic Poetry Genres Forms Arabic prosody National literatures of Arab States Concepts Texts Fictional Arab people South Arabian deities The hammam combines

6720-416: Was accessible to passersby) while the kuttab was usually above it on the upper levels. Mamluk sabils had facades with large windows covered by heavy bronze grilles and their exteriors were well-decorated, typically with stone-carving along their surfaces and with multi-coloured marble panels above the windows. The interiors were also typically decorated with marble mosaics and with painted wooden ceilings, while

6804-516: Was awarded to the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk "(b. 1952) famous for his novels My Name Is Red and Snow , "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures". Pamuk was the first Turk to receive the Nobel Prize, He describes himself as a Cultural Muslim who associates the historical and cultural identification with

6888-440: Was common to visit hammams before weddings or religious holidays, to celebrate births, to swap beauty tips, etc. Women also used visits to the hammam to size up potential wives for their sons. Some accessories from Roman times survive in modern hammams, such as the peştemal (a special cloth of silk and/or cotton to cover the body, like a pareo ) and the kese (a rough mitten used for scrubbing). However, other accoutrements of

6972-514: Was only under Ottoman rule (from 1517 onward) that independent sabil-kuttabs became a common building type in Cairo, with notable examples like the Sabil-kuttab of Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda at Bayn al-Qasrayn . This was in part because the Ottoman governors and elites of this period had relatively limited resources and Cairo itself had become densely built-up, leaving little space to build more. As such,

7056-436: Was written in a laconical style contrasting with its content, where djinns and fairies surge from within contexts drawn from ordinary real life situations. Inspired by a much older story written both in Arabic and Assyrian , the author also displays in his work his deep knowledge of sufism , hurufism and Bektashi traditions. Muhayyelât is considered to be an early precursor of the new Turkish literature to emerge in

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