156 PERSIAN WATER PIPES. 
_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 
a reaches the lips of the 
A PERSIAN WATER PIPE. smoker, as 2 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 bow] 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 sit (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 was 
given bya holy man toa virtuous youth, disconsolate at the loss of his loving wife. ‘Go te 
thy wife’s tomb,” said the anchorite, “and there thou wilt find a weed. Piuck it, place it in 
and brother," continued theboly mat in Womerle etre, "acd above "aiy WAL Ge a wise 
7 0! an, in Homeric strain, “and abeve all, w: ie & wise 
counsellor, and teach thy soul wisdom and thy Spirit joy.”" eyerans 
