156 



PERSIAN WATER PIPES. 



A PERSIAN WATER PIPB. 



The Persians* are said to be the first to invent the mode 

 of drawing tobacco smoke through water thereby cooling it 



before inhaling it. Fair- 

 holt says " it is to smoking 

 what ice is to Champagne." 

 The London Review gives 

 the following description 

 of pipes and smoking 

 apparatus : 



" The hookah of India is 

 the most splendid and glit- 

 tering of all pipes ; it is a 

 large affair, on account of 

 the arrangements for caus- 

 ing the smoke to pass 

 through water before it 

 reaches the lips of the 

 smoker, as a means of ren- 

 dering it cooler and of ex- 

 tracting from it much of its rank and disagreeable flavor. 



" On the top of an air-tight vessel, half filled with water, is 

 a bowl containing tobacco ; a small tube descends from the 

 bowl into the water, and a flexible pipe, one end of which is 

 between the lips of the smoker, is inserted at the other 

 end into the vessel, above the level of the water. Such 

 being the adjustment, the philosophy of the inhalation 

 may be easily 'understood. The smoke sucks the air out of 

 the vessel, and makes a partial vacuum ; the external air, 

 pressing on the burning tobacco, drives the smoke through 

 the small tube into the water beneath ; purified from some of 

 its rank qualities, the smoke bubbles up into the vacant part 

 of the vessel above the water, and passes through the flexible 

 pipe to the smoker's mouth. Sometimes the affair is made 

 still more luxurious by substituting rose-water for water pur 

 et simple. The tube is so long and flexible that the smoker 

 may &it (or squat) at a small or great distance from the vessel 

 containing the water. In the courts of princes and wealthy 

 natives the vessels and tubes are lavishly adorned with 

 precious metals. One mode of showing hospitality in the 



Sandys, writing in 1610 narrates a Persian legend to the effect that Shiraz tobacco wa* 

 given by a holy man to a virtuous youth, disconsolate at the loss of his loving wife. " Go to 

 thy wife's tomb," said the anchorite, " and there thou wilt find a weed. Pluck it. place it in 

 a reed, and inhale the smoke, as you put nre to it. This will be to you wife, mother, father 

 and brother," continued the holy man, in Homeric strain, "and above all, will bo a wise 

 counsellor, and teach thy soul wiadoin and thy spirit joy." 



