The Bathhouse and the Drinking Fountain: Water’s Legacy in the Islamic City

Water’s importance in Islamic culture has, over the centuries, also left its mark on the design of the city. The fountains, cisterns, and public baths that can still be found today in cities around the Islamic world survive as a physical testimony to the central role water plays in Muslim society.

The hammam, the public bathhouse, has a long history that goes back to pre-Islamic times. Tradition attributes the creation of the bathhouse to King Solomon and Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba (see Al-Tha`labi, The Stories of the Prophets for more on the origin of the hammam). While scholars generally agree that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) never visited a hammam himself, they were much frequented until running water was installed in homes.

It’s Original Mercy…Not Sin

While the visit to the hammam was, of course, in the first place part of the purification ritual, the steam and hot water also served medicinal purposes, and many visited them for health reasons. Today hammams are not frequented as often as they were, except in North African countries like Tunisia and Morocco, where visits to the hammam have become a social event as much as a component of the religious ritual.

Before running water was installed in households, inhabitants of the Islamic city fetched their water from fountains, cisterns or wells. In many of the medieval towns, the water source was a place where women and girls met and chatted when they came to fill up their jugs and pitchers every day. Today little remains of these social hubs with the exception of the sabil, the drinking water fountain that existed through the Ottoman Empire.

Sabils were usually charitable donations from rich and powerful citizens, and their water was free for all. They were more than just water sources; soon buildings were designed around them, and they evolved to become architectural features within the urban texture, monuments to water’s holy qualities. Many sabils are combined with small madrasas (schools) on the first floor.

They are called sabil-kuttub, literally “fountains of books” or “fountain schools”. Hidden in the narrow alleys and lanes of Islamic Cairo, the sabil and the sabil-kuttub can still be found. Some are built of wood and decorated with fine carvings; some look like baroque tea pavilions, dripping with ornaments, elaborate stone and metalwork; others are hardly recognizable, crumbling stone structures hidden under layers of grime and dust. Today, as the majority of homes have running water, the sabil has fallen into disuse, though some of the madrasas within them still function.

Shafa and Shirb: Water and Islamic Law

The harsh desert climate of Arabia, the Near East and Saharan North Africa makes water a highly valuable and precious resource here. Islamic law, the Shari`ah, goes into great detail on the subject of water to ensure the fair and equitable distribution of water within the community.

The word “Shari`ah” itself is closely related to water. It is included in early Arab dictionaries and originally meant “the place from which one descends to water”. Before the advent of Islam in Arabia, the shari`ah was, in fact, a series of rules about water use: the shuraat al-maa were the permits that gave right to drinking water. The term later evolved to include the body of laws and rules given by Allah.

Water is a gift from Allah. It is one of the three things that every Muslim is entitled to: grass (pasture for cattle), water, and fire. Water should be freely available to all, and any Muslim who withholds unneeded water commits a sin. The Hadiths say that among the three people Allah will ignore on the Day of Resurrection there will be “the man who, having water in excess of his needs, refuses it to a traveler…” (Abu Dawud and authenticated by Al-Albani)

There are two fundamental precepts that guide the rights to water in the Shari`ah: shafa, the right of thirst, establishes the universal right for humans to quench their thirst and that of their animals; shirb, the right of irrigation, gives all users the right to water their crops. Both rules are interpreted in different ways by the various schools of Islam, and their implementation varies from region to region, from village to village, each community applying the law to suit geographical and social circumstances.