Tellak
A Youth in a Hammam Smoking a Pipe is evocative of a young tellak who worked in the hamam. Tellaks, were important participants in bathhouse culture, they scrubbed and massaged the bathers, using a kese (scrubbing glove). Tellaks earned a salary through tips from customers. Most tellaks were migrant workers and bachelors who lived and worked in the bathhouse. Prior to the Patrona Halil Rebellion in the late eighteenth century, many were of Albanian origin. Their names, physical traits and origins are recorded in bathhouse records, such as from Çemberlitas Hamami, revealing many young tellaks and natirs worked under adult ustas. ‘Master’ usta tellaks wore black silk towels. The painting reflects a young boy, wearing wooden clogs (nalin) dressed in traditional Ottoman bath attire, in the hamam. While the identity of the youth in the hamam is not known, he could also be a customer visiting the hamam. This album painting, was likely produced for a foreign dignitary or an elite member of society, highlighting also the bath tiles and luxurious peshtamel worn by the youth.
Sources:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/823142
Nina Macaraig, Çemberlitas Hamami in Istanbul: The Biographical Memoir of a Turkish Bath.