What are hookahs?

A hookah, also known as a water pipe, is a single or multi-stemmed instrument for vaporizing and smoking flavored tobacco called shisha in which the vapor or smoke is passed through a water basin-often glass-based-before inhalation.

The origin of the water pipe is from the time of the Safavid dynasty in the Persian empire, which extended into India to where it also spread during that time. The hookah or Argyleh soon reached Egypt and the Levant during the Ottoman dynasty where it became very popular and where the mechanism was later perfected.

The word hookah is a derivative of "huqqa", an Arabic term. Outside its native region, smoking the hookah has gained popularity in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, Tanzania, and South Africa, largely due to immigrants from the Levant, where it is especially popular, who introduce it to younger people.

Excluding grommets, a hookah consists of a number of components-also known as the head of the hookah, the bowl is a container; A hookah cover windscreen is a cover which sits over the bowl area, with some form of air holes; if the pipe has a hose, it is not a "hookah", the term is historically referred to as a straight-neck tube while the body sits on top of the water base and A plate or ashtray sits just below the bowl to catch ashes falling off the coals.

The hookah has been a traditional smoking instrument in Bangladesh, as it has been in India. However, flavored shisha was introduced in the early 2000s. Hookah lounges spread quite quickly between 2008 and 2011 and became popular among young people as well as middle-aged people as a relaxation method. There have been allegations of a government crack-down on hookah bars to prevent illicit drug usage.