Cleanliness

With the establishment of Istanbul as an Ottoman urban center, came new cultural and religious practices for the city’s population. As an Islamic state, certain rules pertaining to the Qur’an were now an important part of every day life. In order to correctly pray, it was mandatory to perform a ritualistic cleansing of the full body, or “ghusul.” This need for cleanliness for the people of Istanbul and their religious practices resulted in an increase in hammams being built throughout the city. Hammams were open to both men and women and featured space dedicated to the mandatory ritual cleansing of the body that one had to do in order to enter a mosque for prayer. In this page from The Ottoman Turkish Zenanname (ʻBook of Womenʼ), we see women of all ages in differing stages of undress as they go through the process of cleaning their bodies in the Hammam.