What does the word, “hookah” mean and why is it used?

The word, “hookah” is Turkish. Over 500 years ago the Turks devised a way of cooling smoking tobacco by inserting the tobacco bowl into a water jug. They attached flexible hoses to the bowl using pitch to seal it. The hoses, being partially submerged in the water, cooled the smoke as it was inhaled by the smokers. It was a common way for men to socialize, and many decisions, including life-and-death ones, were made during a hookah experience.

Hookah smoking eventually found popularity throughout the entire Middle East, where it is still practiced, socially, in homes and in cafes.

The word is sometimes, erroneously, credited to the Arabs thanks to the 1940’s Hollywood, B movies that showed a bunch of Arabian sheiks sitting in a tent smoking.

During the late 1800’s, divers, from Greece were employed to harvest sponges while wearing copper hard hats with air hoses going to the surface. Manual and, ultimately, electric and fuel driven pumps, provided air to the divers below. The Greeks, historically, also had experience with hookah smoking, as Greece is a neighbor of Turkey and the similarity of a gas (air) passing through cooling waters didn’t go unnoticed.

Hookah diving was born and the name still sticks.