Whether you call it hookah, shisha, sheesha, hubblebubble or nargileh, it all points to the same delighful oriental smoking tool - the pleasantly bubbling and heavenly smelling waterpipe! Carefully heated by little smoldering chunks of special hookah charcoal, the fruit-flavored hookah tobacco does not really burn but gets "roasted" instead, producing a rich smoke that is drawn via a metal tube through the water in the bowl, and then though a flexible hose to the shisha smokers mouth.

 

Hookah smoking is widely spread through the Middle East, North Africa, parts of the former Soviet Union, and further eastward throughout Central Asia. In the West it's much more recent; although travellers brought home the odd nargileh and hookah and contentedly smoked them with whatever tobacco happened to be at hand, mainly during the last ten years or so did muassel or fruit-flavored sheesha tobacco become widely available, giving a nice boost to use and enjoyment of water-pipes. Your webmaster Jaap Verduijn, by the way, smokes shisha wherever he goes: the pic to the right shows him in Egypt.

 

There are several manufacturers of hookahs in the Middle East: especially Egypt , Syria and Turkey export many pipes. But also Japan produces water-pipes of good quality, and in fact it doesn't matter where the shisha pipe comes from: apart from relatively small local differences, hookah construction and workings are simple and standard. Our page Hookah, shisha, nargileh... tells you all about... the hooka pipe!