TURKISH PIPES. 157 



East is to place a hookah in the center of the apartment, 

 range the guests around, and let all have a whiff of the pipe 

 in turn; but in more luxurious establishments a separate 

 hookah is placed before each guest. Some of the Egyptians 

 use a form of hookah called the narghile or nargeeleh so 

 named because the water is contained in the shell of a cocoa- 

 nut of which the Arabic name is nargeeleh. Another kind, 

 having a glass vessel, is called the sheshee having, like the 

 other, a very long tube. Only the choicest tobacco is used 

 with the hookah and nargeeleh ; it is grown in Persia. 



" Before it is used, the tobacco is washed several times, and 

 put damp into the pipe-bowl, two or three pieces of live 

 charcoal are put on the top. The moisture gives mildness to 

 the tobacco, but renders inhalation so difficult that weak 

 lungs are unfitted to bear it. The dry tobacco preferred by 

 the Persians does not involve so much difficulty in t blowing 

 a cloud.'" 



TUEKISH CHIBOUQUES AND WOOD PIPES. 



" The stiff-stemmed Turkish pipes, quite different from the 

 flexible tube of the hookah and narghile, are of two kinds, 

 the kablioun or long pipe, and the chibouque or short pipe. 

 Some of the stems of the kablioun, made of cherry tree, jas- 

 mine, wild plum, and ebony, are five feet in length, and are 

 bored with a kind of gimlet. The workman, placing the 

 gimlet above the long, slender branchlet of wood, bores half 

 the length, and then reverses the position to operate upon 

 the other half. The wild cherry tree wood, which is the 

 most frequently employed, is seldom free from defects in 

 the bark, and some skill is exercised in so repairing these 

 defective places that the mending shall be invisible." 



The tubes or pipe-bowls used with these stems are mostly 

 a combination of two substances the red clay of Nish and 

 the white earth of Rustchuk ; they are graceful in form and 

 sometimes decorated with gilding. It is characteristic of 

 some of the Turks that they estimate the duration of a 

 journey, and with it the distance traveled, by the number of 

 pipes smoked, a particular size of pipe-bowl being understood. 

 Dodwell, in his " Tour through Greece," says that " a Turk 

 is generally very clean in his smoking apparatus, having a 

 small tin dish laid on the carpet of his apartment, on which 

 the bowl of the pipe can rest, to prevent the tobacco from 



