Hammam

This article is about hammam, the Turkish bath establishment. There is also an article on the movie Hamam. The hammam (Arabic , Turkish hamam) or Turkish bath is the Middle Eastern variant of a steam bath, which can be categorized as a wet relative of the sauna. They had played an important role in cultures of the Middle-East, serving as places of social gathering, ritual cleansing and as architectural structures, institutions, and (later) elements with special customs attached to them. Europeans learned about the Hammam via contacts with Turkey hence the European name for it: "Turkish" hammam.