Hookah manufacturing moved from hand-forged brass in Cairo to stainless steel and silicone — yet most hookahs in the world are still made using older techniques.

Before getting into corpus materials, it's worth going back to the device itself: even the story of its invention has come down to us as a legend with internal contradictions.

Who First Passed Hookah Smoke Through Water?

According to a version recorded by the French traveler and writer Louis Rousselet, the device for passing smoke through water was invented by the court physician of the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great (1542–1605) — Hakim Abu'l-Fath Gilani, who came from the province of Gilan in northern Persia. Tobacco became fashionable at Akbar's court after the ambassador of Bijapur, Asad Beg, prompted the emperor to start smoking, and the physician proposed cooling and "purifying" the smoke with water.

This version undermines itself. A quatrain by the Persian poet Ahli Shirazi, who died in 1535 — that is, decades before the supposed invention — already mentions the use of a device called ḡalyān in Persia, predating the reign of Shah Tahmasp I. This suggests Abu'l-Fath Gilani more likely carried an already-existing Persian device to India rather than inventing it from scratch. At the same time, there is no evidence of a water pipe existing before the 1560s, and tobacco, as far as the available data shows, only reached India in the 17th century — meaning the substance in the Persian poet's quatrain was probably not tobacco. The story of the hookah's invention rests on a source that contradicts itself on dates — worth keeping in mind whenever you encounter a confident version of the device's origin.

Why Were Hookah Bowls Made of Glass?

For the 17th–18th centuries, glass hookah bases weren't an isolated local craft of a single region but part of the broader picture of Islamic glassmaking at the time. An academic source (Carboni, 2001) describes the Late Islamic period as an era of three glassmaking centers — the Ottomans in Turkey, the Persian Safavids (later the Zands and Qajars), and the Mughals in northern India — and names direct influence from European glass as their main characteristic: Venetian, Bohemian (18th century), and Dutch.

Production of high-quality thin glass all but ceased during this time in Egypt, Syria, and Persia; Islamic glass reached a high artistic level again only in 17th-century India — again under European influence. In the Ottoman Empire, glassmaking still existed and is documented: a glassblowers' guild worked in Istanbul, and a production center stood on the Bosphorus shore at Beykoz, though the quality of this glass was low and strongly influenced by Venetian and Bohemian techniques and styles. Among the surviving objects of the era is a hookah-narghile base from Lucknow, India, dated to roughly 1700–1750.

From this a conclusion suggests itself: the glass hookah bases of the Ottoman Empire and Persia in this period weren't the product of an unbroken local tradition but the result of the decline of fine glassmaking in Egypt, Syria, and Persia, set against strong European influence. An important caveat: this is a conclusion drawn from the overall body of facts about glassmaking in general, not a direct chain of the kind "Bohemian craftsmen made hookah bowls for export" — the sources confirm Bohemia's influence on Islamic glass in general, not specifically on hookah bowls.

How Did Cairo Craftsmen Hand-Forge Hookahs?

No independent source could be found on the metal part of the 17th–18th-century hookah — the stem and body — but there is material, though from an interested party, on the later, 19th–20th-century Cairo brass tradition. According to the official blog of the company Khalil Mamoon (a source from the company itself, with no independent verification conducted), its founder began making hookahs by hand in Cairo in 1873, having previously traded in antiques and furniture. A third-party trade aggregator citing the same date calls the workshop "the oldest hookah house in the world" — but this, too, is a commercial source, not a museum or archival one.

By the same materials, all hookahs were made exclusively with hand tools, with no machines involved, and the main material was brass. Asymmetry and uneven seams, inevitable in hand forging, are presented by the company as a mark of authenticity rather than a defect: what would be a flaw in factory production became an identifying trait in craft production.

When Did Brass Stop Being the Only Material?

Over the following decades, the same workshop, by its own account, expanded its material range: alongside brass came bronze, copper, and stainless steel, used both separately and in combination. For a hookah owner this meant a different weight and different behavior on contact with water and heat: brass and copper are noticeably heavier than stainless steel and require more careful handling during wet cleaning to avoid tarnishing or corrosion.

What Changed With the Shift to Stainless Steel and Silicone?

The general direction the industry moved in from the 20th century onward is recorded in the "Modern development" section of the Wikipedia article on the hookah: instead of copper, brass, and low-quality alloys, manufacturers increasingly turned to stainless steel and aluminum, while silicone rubber compounds replaced leather and wire in hoses. For an owner, this meant a more durable construction, the near-disappearance of foreign odors during smoking, and the ability to wash the hookah without risking corrosion or bacterial buildup — something a brass body and a leather hose could not withstand.

The same article adds a caveat: despite the clear advantages, a significant share of hookahs worldwide is still produced using older technologies — due to the cost of modern production and a shortage of appropriate equipment in traditional producing regions. Old and new production exist side by side rather than one replacing the other.

How Did a Craft Trade Become a Global Market?

The commercial hookah industry has long since outgrown individual workshops. Among the players the Wikipedia article names specifically are the Lebanese company Al Fakher (founded in 1999, owned by AIR Global) and the Egyptian Al-Nakhla/Nakhla Tobacco, both popular across the MENA region. A 2019 report by the anti-tobacco nonprofit "It's Still Tobacco" estimated the age of the modern hookah industry at roughly 20 years at the time of publication — placing its starting point around the turn of the 1990s into the 2000s — and named among its innovations the appearance of ready-made ceramic bowls, an expansion of tobacco flavor lines, and the use of dry ice in production. The public face of the industry in this period became the hospitality sector — hookah cafés, bars, and restaurants.

What Does Today's Hookah Catalog Show?

The range of constructions coexisting in hookah production today is visible in Hookah Hub's own catalog: among 42 brands and 487 models are both solid cast-iron Turkish-style narghiles — direct heirs of craft, non-modular assembly — and manufacturers whose entire catalog consists of modular, disassemblable systems with no single named, fixed set of parts. This isn't two stages of one evolution where the second replaces the first, but two production principles that exist in parallel: a sealed, one-piece body versus a kit that can be taken apart for washing, with parts replaced individually.

In Short

Who invented the water-cooled hookah?

It isn't known for certain. The common version names the court physician of Emperor Akbar, but the version is internally contradictory on dates, and it most likely describes the transfer of an already-existing Persian device rather than an invention from scratch.

What were hookah bowls made of before glass?

No documented data on the material before the 17th–18th centuries was found; for that period, glass produced under strong Venetian and Bohemian influence is confirmed — but not as a separate hookah tradition, rather as part of Islamic glassmaking as a whole.

Is it true that the first hookah in Cairo was made by Khalil Mamoon in 1873?

That date is known only from the company's own account and a third-party trade aggregator — no independent confirmation could be found, so it should be treated as a manufacturer's claim rather than an established fact.

How do stainless steel and silicone differ from brass and leather in daily use?

Stainless steel and silicone don't corrode from water and hold up to frequent washing, while brass and a leather hose need more careful upkeep and change color and smell over time.

Why is most of the world's hookah production still done with older technologies?

Because of the cost of modern production and a shortage of appropriate equipment in traditional producing regions — the shift to new materials didn't fully replace older production, it was added alongside it.

For the device itself and its regional names, see the article "The History of the Hookah." How the bowl's shape evolved separately from the body is covered in "The Evolution of the Hookah Bowl." Modern stem materials are compared in "Stem Materials: Steel, Brass, Aluminum, Wood, Glass," and how material and manufacturing method factor into price is covered in "What Makes Up the Price of a Hookah."