Fanning the coals
Clearing the stem.
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Clearing the stem.
The hookah hose spends more time in a smoker's hand than any other part of the device, yet museum catalogs barely describe it.
Classical Persian hookah (ḡalyān) terminology names each part separately: bādgīr — the chimney or lid, sar-e ḡalyān (sarpūš) — the upper bowl for tobacco, tana — the body, mīlāb — the tube submerged in water, ney-e pīč — the hose itself, kūza — the water reservoir. The hose had its own name already at the point when the language for describing the hookah took shape — it was singled out as a distinct part. But recognition in language is not the same as attention from curators: in museum collections the tana and kūza are almost always dated, while the ney-e pīč does not appear in catalogs as a separately dated object. Where the words "hookah," "narghile," and "shisha" themselves came from is covered in the article "Narghile, Shisha, Hookah, Hooka: Where the Names Came From."
The full story of the hookah's origin is in the article "History of the Hookah"; here only what bears directly on the dispute. The version that follows Encyclopaedia Iranica: the hookah was invented by the Persian physician Abu'l-Fath Gilani (died 1588) at the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar I in India. But the same encyclopedia, and the Wikipedia article that draws on it, offer another reading: the Persian poet Ahli Shirazi died in 1535, and ḡalyān is already mentioned in his verses. If so, the hookah existed in Persia before Gilani's lifetime, and his role at Akbar's court was not invention but the transfer of an already-established device to India. Both versions rest on the same body of sources; the disagreement lies in how Gilani's role is read — inventor or intermediary.
Tobacco reached the Mughal court from Iran in the early 17th century and quickly spread among the nobility. It reached the Ottoman Empire earlier — by the mid-16th century. In Persia itself, hookah smoking became a "national habit" under Shah Abbas II (1642–1666): the court kept servants dedicated to tending hookahs and water reservoirs, which were made of glass, ceramic, or gourd.
Alongside the hookah, the chibouk (Turkish çubuk) was widespread across the Ottoman Empire and Iran — a wooden pipe roughly 1.2–1.5 m long, often made of jasmine wood, with a clay bowl at the end: no water, no flexible hose — the smoker held and raised the entire rigid stem to the mouth. Today the chibouk is described as an obsolete device that is barely produced anymore: it was displaced by the hookah and cigarettes. The flexible hose was exactly the link the chibouk lacked: it let the mouthpiece be passed from hand to hand without moving the heavy water-filled base. Istanbul's Tophane district is described in auction catalogs (Sotheby's, Capitolium Art) as a 19th-century center for producing ceramic chibouk bowls with amber mouthpieces — but these are lot descriptions, not academic publications.
This is the central gap in the material. None of the catalogs checked describes an early flexible hookah hose with a date attached to its construction — even though the bases, bowls, and decoration of hookahs from the same era are dated in detail. The reason lies in the material: the hose was made of leather, fabric, and wood, and this organic matter does not outlive its owner — it tears, dries out, rots, and where a hookah survives at all, what remains in its place is a later substitute. The oldest dated hookah among the collections checked is the "Kalian" from Iran, roughly 1650–1700, fritware, held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London — but that date is for the vessel, not the hose. A more telling example comes from LACMA: a silver hookah from Delhi, roughly 1880–1900, whose description states outright that the mouthpiece for the hose is made of string and wood and is a replacement. Even on a hookah from the late 19th century, the original hose did not survive to reach the display case.
From this follows what cannot be passed over in silence: the year the "leather over a wire coil" construction appeared, the year of the switch to a rubber bladder inside the hose, the year of the first silicone hose, the story about Syrian craftsmen being the first to split the hose into sections — none of these details turned up in any source with a date attached. That does not mean none of it happened; it means the popular history of the hose rests on retellings, not documents.
Where preservation failed, neighboring objects tell the story of the device's status. By the late 17th to early 18th century, makers had begun producing hookah reservoirs specifically as decorative objects rather than repurposing chance vessels — that is how a curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art describes the "Hookah Base" from Mughal India, glass with enamel and gilding from the early 1700s. The Metropolitan Museum holds a "Water Pipe Base" from the Deccan (Bidar), 18th–19th century — a zinc alloy with engraving and silver inlay in the bidri technique — and a "Huqqa Mat," India, circa 1800: silk, cotton, velvet, and canvas embroidered with metallic thread, sequins, and beads — furnishing on which a hookah stood as if on a pedestal. The museum separately holds applied decorative elements of a hookah from mid-19th-century Iran — gold with enamel and turquoise, brass with glass and turquoise; such fittings were attached across the device, likely including the hose's mouthpiece mount. And that the hookah was a status attribute is visible in court painting from the Punjab Hills and Rajasthan: in the portraits "Maharaja Kirpal Pal of Basohli Smoking" (circa 1690) and "Maharaja Bijai Singh in His Harem" (circa 1770), hookah smoking is shown as an attribute of rulership.
Verifiable technical facts about the hose and mouthpiece appear latest of all — and by then they come from medical studies, not museum catalogs. Sharing one mouthpiece among several people, and passing the hose "toward oneself" so the mouthpiece doesn't point at the next smoker, are described as an established practice; personal disposable mouthpieces reduce but do not eliminate the risk of transmitting infection. A survey of 970 students at a US university (data collected in 2007) found that among those trying hookah for the first time, 96.9% smoked through a shared mouthpiece; students explained not using individual mouthpieces by saying "it isn't necessary with friends and family," that mouthpieces were unavailable, or that they simply didn't know about them. The authors recommended promoting disposable hoses and mouthpieces. A microbiological study in Saudi Arabia (132 samples) found the opposite pattern by component: contaminated samples were more common for the water bowl (69.69%) than for the mouthpiece (10.6%), and the bacteria isolated included MRSA and antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae.
A traditional leather hose, according to descriptions from industry retail sites (not an academic source, but a fact about the material of the current period), is made by wrapping leather or a substitute around an internal wire coil — this gives flexibility but means the hose cannot be washed: moisture and resin build up inside over time, and the coil can rust. The claim that modern hoses are made of silicone instead of leather and wire also appears in the Wikipedia article on the hookah — but at that exact point, unlike most of the article's other claims, there is no citation. Precise dates remain missing: no source with a date was found for the "leather over a coil" construction, the switch to a rubber bladder, or the first silicone hose. What today's hoses are made of, their diameter, and how to care for them is covered separately in the article "Hookah Hoses: Materials, Diameter, and Care."
Is there a museum piece of an early flexible hookah hose with a precise date? No — no catalog checked describes an early hose dated to its own construction; what survives is mainly the body and reservoir, and the hose on 19th-century pieces is often a later replacement.
Why is the hookah hose so poorly documented? It was made of organic material — leather, fabric, wood — which does not survive decades of storage the way the glass, metal, and ceramic used for the base and bowl do.
Who invented the hookah? There is no single answer: one version names the physician Abu'l-Fath Gilani at Akbar's court in India as the inventor; another, citing a mention of the hookah by the poet Ahli Shirazi, who died earlier, holds that the hookah already existed in Persia before Gilani.
When did the silicone hookah hose appear? No verified source confirms an exact date; the dates and the wire-coil origin story circulated by retailers come with no reference to a primary source.
Is it true that a shared hookah mouthpiece carries an infection risk? Yes: studies have found antibiotic-resistant bacteria on hookah components, including the mouthpiece, and surveys show that most people smoking hookah for the first time do so through a shared mouthpiece.
Related topics: "History of the Hookah," "The Evolution of the Hookah Bowl," "How Hookah Manufacturing Changed: From Hand Forging to Stainless Steel," "Narghile, Shisha, Hookah, Hooka: Where the Names Came From," "Hookah Hoses: Materials, Diameter, and Care," "Hookah Etiquette: What's Customary and Why," and "The Hookah in European Art and Literature.