So, at Jimbo's request, I will take an inch and turn it into a mile.Capn Jimbo wrote:Hass, a brilliant post and terrific pics. Although very common outside this country, we are very naive about the many ways people enjoy their spiritual imbibing and smoking in other parts of the world.
Question: I see the what appears to be coals on top of the tobacco which of course leads to the smoke. What kind of coals are used? And does the hookah fit over this burning pot?
The nargile (Turkish spelling), nargila/nargileh/arguileh/arghilé/etc (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine), shisha (Egypt and North Africa, Persian gulf), hookah (India + the Anglosphere), qalyan/ghalyoon/ghelyoon/kalyan (Iran, Russia and Caucasus), and myriad other names for the same thing, is a smoking device as old as tobacco itself, if not older, with the very first reference to it coming from a Persian poem dating from the first years of the 16th century, before any documented tobacco smoking in Iran. From Iran it spread to the culturally Persian Mughal court of India, where, centuries later, the British discovered it. From Iran westward it spread to the similarly Persianate Ottoman court. It was there that the device evolved into the form familiar today, and was then spread to its various territories, including most of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Greece and the Balkans.
Today "hookah" is popular with youth throughout the world, thanks largely to Arab emigrants who have taken it with them. There is now a plethora of candy-flavored, washed tobaccos, which are analogous to cotton candy compared to black licorice, and which draw in ever more people.
I myself like some of the more "natural" flavored tobaccos, as well as many unflavored tobaccos produced specifically for the nargile. So, let's get into that.
In my part of the Middle East (Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey), there are two principal types of tobacco, which in Arabic are called mu'assal, meaning "honeyed" and 'ajami, literally meaning "Persian." The former is cut into small pieces, not dissimilar to ribbon cut pipe tobacco, and is then mixed with honey, glycerine, or other humectants/sweeteners, and optionally flavorings and dyes. The more popular tobaccos are all of the flavored mu'assal variety. There does, however, remain a decent variety of unflavored mu'assal, sometimes referred to (not by Arabs, etc) as "black leaf" since the tobacco is literally black or coffee-brown due to curing and fermenting. Flavored mu'assal is always smoked in a deeply concave bowl, covered tightly with aluminum foil with holes poked through (or a screen of some sort), upon which the charcoal is placed, like this:
Outside the Middle East, that's just about what everyone smokes, and even in the Eastern Med countries, it's by FAR the most popular thing to smoke (apart from cigarettes) by the under-50 crowd. Flavors range from the ever popular "double apple" (really an apple + anise combo) to absurd shit like "blue raspberry jolly rancher" and "mojito flavor". I like the more conservative ones like the aforementioned apple, melon, strawberry, etc. However, flavored mu'assal was only invented in the 1980s. For most of the 20th century, unflavored was the only wet, sweetened tobacco available. This is either smoked just like the flavored stuff (my preference), or with the coals straight on, like this:
.
Popular brands include Salloum as well as various lines made by Nakhla, one of the giants in the industry, including Zaghloul, Khan al Khalili, Qass Super, and Batta. All of these are broadly similar, but some are more robust, some more sour, some smokier, some richer, etc. Salloum is probably the sweetest and most complex, with Khan al Khalili by Nakhla being the most full-bodied, as it were. Zaghloul is one of the most ubiquitous - it's a very dry, slightly sour smoke, which has an acrid note on its own, but really works well as a mixer. In Egypt and North Africa, unflavored Mu'assal is still very, very popular.
But, for hundreds of years, in most of the Ottoman world, there was only one kind of nargile tobacco: ajami, also known by the names tonbaak (Persian) and tömbeki (Turkish). This is tobacco light in color, in a very pure form, nothing but cured leaf, and I suspect usually of the "Turkish/yenice/oriental" variety. In the Arab world this takes two main forms - whole leaves or very large pieces of leaves, which are wrapped very tightly around a flat bowl into a sort of cylinder, or smaller shreds, again similar to ribbon cut, which are compacted and piled on top of the bowl. In all cases, the tobacco is first soaked in water and squeezed dry, and charcoal is placed directly on top. Here's a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_okLsxrJKl8
And here's what it looks like when prepared with the charcoal on:
Personally, this isn't my favorite. It's really strong (ass-kick of nicotine), and the flavor is like a slightly sour cigar...but filtered through water, so not quite as dry.
The Iranian style that I posted earlier is not done quite the same way - instead it's meant to go in a very deep bowl, piled loosely in about halfway up the bowl, with the charcoals on top, held in by the height of the bowl. This is different than the Iranian tobacco I've had in Lebanon - it has a richer flavor and is more enjoyable. It's certainly as strong though, deep puffs are right out!
Jimbo asked about the coals and a few other things, so here we go.
The hookah/nargile/shisha/etc, is the entire pipe, such as this:
consisting of, from top to bottom: the bowl or head, tray for falling ash, the main stem/body/shaft/shank, and the glass vase/base. The main body has an inner stem which sticks down an inch or so into the water of the base. The hose of course is for breathing in the smoke. Optionally, a wind cover can be added to 1. prevent wind from knocking ash and sparks around from the coals when outdoors, and 2. to conserve heat from dying coals:
The shaft can be anything from wood to steel to aluminum to brass. The one pictured above is brass. The base is typically glass, but can also be ceramic or metal, as seen here:
Bowls can be glazed stoneware or unglazed terra-cotta, with the latter the most traditional and my favorite. There are more options to discuss for bowls but it's not worth it for an overview such as this. Hoses can be made of leather wrapped around a metal coil, or any number of synthetic, washable materials such as vinyl or silicone. Leather hoses are traditional and nicer, and they also allegedly absorb various impurities from the smoke*. However, leather hoses also absorb flavor, so for very strong, distinctive flavors, washable synthetic hoses have an advantage.
As for the charcoals, most crummy hookah bars in the US use instant-light ultra-processed charcoal, which is vile stuff, soaked in lighter fluid and full of chemicals which taint the flavor of the smoke. The traditional charcoal in the Middle East is simply bulk wood charcoal, made from the branches of lemon and orange trees, which look simply like carbonized tree branches, no more than an inch or so thick. These are much like bulk wood charcoal for grilling - they burn very hot and very quick. They smell the worst when lighting, but they have the least taste when fully lit. In the Middle East, where an attendant comes by to adjust your coals every 5-10 minutes, they're perfect. At home, not so much.
In the last 5+ years, most aficionados use charcoal made from coconut husks for home use. They're fairly environmentally friendly, have little to no taste when lit, and burn very consistently. They tend to come in flattened cubes of about 1x1x.5 inches or so, and at that size burn for over an hour. There are an astonishing number of brands of coconut charcoal, representing the explosion in hookah smoking around the world, with some being much better than others in terms of performance and smell. There are other types of charcoal used too, but again, it's not worth getting into.
*I mention "smoke" - when foil is used, you are not burning the tobacco at all, but rather vaporizing the liquid in the wet tobacco. When a bowl is done and the foil removed, what's left is a dried out cake of tobacco, but not ashes.
Anyway, I hope that's a good overview!