"The stylish patrons of a hookah lounge on a terrace in the shadow of Dubai's Burj Khalifa; the teens I spotted taking selfies around a hookah at Istanbul's Ciragan Palace; the friends sharing a pipe on a sidewalk in Cairo; the men setting up a hookah on a sand dune in the Saudi desert-they're all carrying on a tradition that began in the royal courts of Mughal India before traveling to Iran, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa, and, eventually, the West."
"At every stop along its winding journey, I learned as I spoke to historians, professors, journalists, and enthusiasts around the world, the hookah became ubiquitous. "Like drinking coffee, the social habit became greater than the act of smoking itself," says Tara Desjardins, curator of South Asia at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. Legend has it that revered Turkish architect Mimar Sinan placed a hookah under the dome of the Sülemaniye Mosque to test its acoustics."
A block in New York City's Nomad neighborhood evokes memories of diverse global places through the scented smoke of a hookah lounge. Hookah smoking traces roots to royal Mughal India and traveled through Iran, Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa before reaching the West. The practice functions as a social ritual, often valued more for communal connection than for smoking itself. Patrons appear across contexts—from terraces under Dubai's Burj Khalifa and Istanbul's Ciragan Palace to Cairo sidewalks and Saudi desert dunes. Historical anecdotes link the hookah to figures like Mimar Sinan and 18th-century Calcutta observers who emphasized its ubiquity.
Read at Conde Nast Traveler
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