History of the Hookah!
Hookah is a smoking apparatus that emerges from Middle Eastern traditions that have now become popularized worldwide by both college students and hookah bars alike. The term hookah refers to both the activity and the apparatus used to smoke a mixture of flavored tobacco, shisha, or maasal. What makes shisha or maasal unique to tobacco is that it is mixed with sweeteners such as dried fruit, molasses, or honey in order to add additional flavoring to the smoke vapors produced.
The hookah itself is an intricately designed water pipe designed with recreation and socialization in mind. Traditionally, a group of friends or family members casually sits around a hookah as a means of recreation, slowly passing the hookah pipe from one person to the next. It is a common misconception to associate hookah with illegal drugs and narcotics, but this is not the case. In fact, hookah emerged from South Asian and Middle Eastern cultural practices exercised by both the wealthy upper classes and intellectual elites. Though the hookah is now recognized worldwide as an exotic smoking activity, its origins and diversification throughout Asian, Middle Eastern and world history enrich this now internationalized smoking tradition with interesting anecdotes and cultural nuances.
What is a Hookah Pipe?
A hookah can be a single or multi-stemmed apparatus for vaporizing and smoking flavored tobacco. Traditionally, hookahs are made of glass although they can also be found made of brass, other metals, or ceramics, and they can be adorned with ornate paintings and intricate designs.
Modern-day hookahs are typically oblong objects that look quite similar to the base of a glass lamp without a lampshade. Though they are peculiar in appearance, a surprising amount of engineering and physics goes into a hookah’s design. Its mechanism operates through suction, passing vapor or smoke through a chamber of water at the bottom of the vase. The suction is propelled by a straw used by hookah smokers. Inside the hookah, coals are positioned to generate heat through suction. These coals are usually covered by a filter, which can be either a metal screen or punched foil, and they activate when the smoker pulls air through the smoking straws, stimulating vapor production. With the passing air, the heated coals emit smoke, which is pulled downward into the underwater basin of the hookah.
Consequently, the smoke rises to the surface of the water inside the vessel as vapor, and then it makes its way up through the tubing and is pulled by the smoking straws into the smoker’s mouth. Some hookahs also include a release valve in order to eliminate excess smoke and to generate a cleaner vapor upon the next inhalation.
