Hookah

Hookah (from Arabic huqqa, through the Hindustani; the Persian kalyun; also called Nargileh, from Persian nārgīl), the water tobacco-pipe of Arabs, Turks, Persians, Hindus, and other orientals. It consists of a bowl for the tobacco, a water-bottle, and a long flexible tube ending in the mouthpiece. A wooden tube leads from the bottom of the head or bowl down into the water in the bottle, and the flexible tube is continued downwards by a stiff tube into the space above the water in the bottle. Thus the smoke is cooled before it reaches the mouth of the smoker. Many of these pipes are beautifully decorated, or even encrusted with gems. The hubble-bubble of India (named from the sound produced) is a similar but simpler water-pipe, made of a cocoa-nut filled with water, and two short wooden tubes at right angles, one going into the water, the other merely passing inside the top of the shell.