Where's the Hookah From, Anyway?

You’ve probably seen them in coffee shops or local hangouts: groups of people, clustered around a hookah pipe, puffing away at a sweet smelling smoke. And chances are, you’ve wondered what it’s all about.

What it’s all about, is a new trend. It’s something more than just a fad, and unlike a lot of new “in things,” this one is likely to stay. It’s social, it’s fun, and it has a long history behind it. It’s hookah smoking.

The hookah is a type of pipe, originating in the area from southern Iran to northwestern India about 700 years ago. Like all pipes, it filters the smoke as you inhale; hookahs use water as the filter, and so they are sometimes called water pipes.

From their origin in the old Persian Empire, hookahs spread through most of the modern Middle East, North Africa, and India. They were first introduced to Westerners in 1800s, when the British gained control of India. For a long time, from the Western perspective, hookahs were seen as nothing more than an exotic feature of some alien cultures. If there were referred to at all, it was to give color to a scene; the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland smokes a hookah.

Thing began to change in the last few years. Hookah smoking became a fad, and then a fashion, among the urban hip, and from there it quickly spread. Hookah lounges can be found in Paris, London, New York, and even Omaha and Detroit. As more people start to smoke this venerable pipe, the trend grows. We’ll explore some of that in this blog.