Fanning the coals
Clearing the stem.
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Clearing the stem.
A hookah cannot be smoked without a heat source: the tobacco under the bowl does not burn on its own — it is heated by charcoal or, in modern versions, by an electric heater. What exactly was used to heat a hookah changed over the centuries more than the design of the pipe itself — from embers taken from an ordinary hearth to industrially pressed coconut cubes and electronic heating plates. This change of fuel ran parallel to the history of the device itself: as historical sources show, the earliest hookah designs were often assembled from whatever materials were at hand, including the very coconut shell that, centuries later, would become raw material not for the body of the device but for the charcoal.
In the early Persian and Ottoman tradition, a separate commodity category of "hookah charcoal" did not exist until the twentieth century. Smoldering embers were taken from an ordinary household fire source. In both Persian and Turkish domestic use, special braziers were used for storing and carrying hot coals — the manqal (Persian manqal) and its Ottoman variant mangal (Turkish mangal); the term traces back to an Arabic root meaning "to carry, to transport" and was already in wide use in Persian by the twelfth century, that is, long before tobacco appeared in the region. The brazier served as a universal store of smoldering charcoal — for heating and cooking, and, in all likelihood, for lighting smoking pipes, although no direct documentary description of this specific practice as applied to the hookah could be found: the connection is logical but not separately confirmed by sources.
Before the appearance of factory-made hookah charcoal, the fuel used was ordinary hardwood charcoal — the same material used for cooking and heating homes. It burned more slowly than factory-made equivalents and required an external fire source to light — the same embers from the hearth or a specially lit brazier.
Charcoal that can be lit directly with a lighter, without kindling from an open flame — so-called quick-light charcoal — became the next step in the history of hookah fuel. This charcoal is impregnated with a chemical accelerant, most often based on potassium nitrate (KNO₃, commonly known as saltpeter): it is the nitrate that provides the flare-up and sustained combustion without an outside flame source. According to trade sources' descriptions, the base of the briquette is crushed coconut shell or bamboo mixed with a readily flammable compound; such a briquette catches from a lighter in about 20 seconds. The exact year in which quick-light charcoal specifically for the hookah first appeared is not documented in the available sources — this date remains unconfirmed.
The convenience of this type of charcoal is obvious: no separate fire source is needed, there is no need to wait for the coals to burn down to the right condition, and lighting takes seconds. But this convenience has a downside in the composition of the combustion products. The accelerant impregnation noticeably raises carbon monoxide output: according to published measurements, quick-light charcoal produces an average of about 3,728 ppm of carbon monoxide over a 90-minute session — versus roughly 1,730 ppm for natural coconut or wood charcoal, that is, more than twice as high. In addition, during the first minutes of smoking, while the combustion accelerant has not yet fully burned off, some smokers report a foreign, chemical taste to the smoke — this is an observation from mid-quality trade sources, not the result of a controlled sensory study.
The alternative was charcoal made not from wood but from coconut shell — a dense, lignin-rich raw material that gives a long and relatively clean burn. According to retail sources, one of the first coconut charcoals to go on sale in the United States was Coco Nara, which debuted in 2006; according to the same sources, it was this product that noticeably changed the hookah charcoal category, beginning to displace hardwood charcoal. No independent, non-commercial confirmation of the exact date has been found — the claim is reproduced only by retailers and by the brand itself — but the general direction of the shift toward coconut charcoal in the 2000s–2010s is not disputed by any source.
Producing coconut charcoal is a multi-stage process. Collected and cleaned coconut shell is subjected to pyrolysis (carbonization) without access to oxygen — in retort kilns or rotating drum kilns, at a temperature of approximately 600–700 °C, for 4–8 hours; the target result is a fixed-carbon content of at least 78%, moisture below 5%, and ash content below 6%. The resulting charcoal is brittle, so it is crushed into a fine powder with a particle size of about 3–5 mm, then mixed with a binder — starch, molasses, or clay (some manufacturers dispense with a binder, relying instead on high-pressure compression) — and pressed into briquettes of the required shape, after which they are dried to the required hardness.
The change of raw material had a noticeable effect on the taste of the session. Coconut charcoal produces little ash and has practically no odor of its own, so it does not overpower the aroma of the tobacco itself; quick-light charcoal, because of its chemical impregnation, can give an off taste, especially before the accelerant has burned off. Coconut charcoal burns more evenly and with a more stable temperature, whereas quick-light charcoal tends toward a sharp spike in heat followed by a rapid decline, and temperature stability directly determines how evenly and for how long the tobacco's flavor unfolds. For the same reason, coconut charcoal burns longer: by trade estimates, 1.5 to 3 times longer than a quick-light briquette of comparable size.
The standard shape of coconut charcoal became a cube with a 25 mm edge (26 mm for some manufacturers); this size became established as the most widespread on the market. A separate shape is "flat" charcoal: a low rectangular briquette approximately 25×25 mm at the base and about 17–18 mm in height.
The difference in shape is not decorative but functional, and it is tied to the spread of heat management devices (HMD) — metal attachments that hold the charcoal above the bowl in place of foil. The Kaloud Lotus, introduced by Kaloud Inc. in 2012, is considered the first device in this category; its founder is Reza Bavar. Flat charcoal performs better specifically on an HMD — its low profile heats the device's grate more evenly; cubes, in turn, stack conveniently in layers in an HMD's basket — according to trade data, two cubes fit in a Kaloud Lotus+, and up to three in larger HMDs from other manufacturers.
Before HMDs became widespread, and in setups that still use foil stretched over the bowl, heating intensity was regulated by the number and arrangement of standard charcoal cubes: the more cubes and the more densely they are arranged on the surface, the stronger the heating of the tobacco. This logic did not change with the arrival of the HMD — the device merely replaced the foil and regularized the air's access to the charcoal, but the number and size of the charcoal portions remain the primary way of manually regulating the bowl's temperature.
Besides charcoal of any type, the market also has a category of devices that dispense with fuel combustion altogether — electric heaters and induction plates for hookahs. They heat the bowl not through combustion but through controlled electrical resistance or a ceramic heating element that contacts the bowl directly. According to the technical descriptions of such devices, the ceramic heating surface reaches operating temperature in about three minutes, the temperature is adjusted smoothly, and the smoke lacks the products of charcoal combustion — carbon monoxide, ash, open heat — characteristic specifically of charcoal ignition. This is not a historical but a current category of equipment: no specific, independently confirmed date for the appearance of the first such device could be found in the available sources.
Separate from taste and convenience is the question of physical safety — and here it is charcoal, not tobacco, that turns out to be the main source of the problem. Carbon monoxide (CO) is a colorless and odorless product of incomplete combustion; it is the burning charcoal, not the tobacco itself, that serves as its main source in hookah smoke. According to a study by the American University of Beirut (Monzer B., Sepetdjian E., Saliba N., Shihadeh A., Food and Chemical Toxicology, 2008, vol. 46, no. 9, pp. 2991–2995), in machine smoking of a hookah with a popular moassel, approximately 90% of the carbon monoxide and 75–92% of the carcinogenic 4- and 5-ring polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the mainstream smoke originated from the charcoal rather than from the tobacco blend; more than 95% of the benzo[a]pyrene in the smoke was likewise linked to the charcoal.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), during a single hookah session a smoker can take in almost 9 times more carbon monoxide and 1.7 times more nicotine than from a single cigarette. In a study covering 10 hookah venues, 7 of them had airborne carbon monoxide levels exceeding values considered hazardous to human health. According to a 2019 literature review, roughly 54 documented cases of carbon monoxide poisoning from hookah use had been recorded in the world scientific literature; according to combined national and international data, the count of cases, including ones not documented in peer-reviewed literature, already runs into the hundreds and continues to grow.
The danger of carbon monoxide is compounded by how it acts physiologically: it has neither color nor smell, so its buildup in the air is not perceptible to the senses until symptoms appear. Typical signs of mild to moderate poisoning are headache, dizziness, nausea, and general weakness; at moderate concentrations these sensations are easily mistaken for the ordinary effect of the hookah itself or for fatigue, which means the poisoning is not always recognized in time as poisoning.
This directly underscores the importance of ventilation: the risk of poisoning depends on the volume of the room, the number of hookahs being smoked simultaneously in that space, and the quality of air exchange — carbon monoxide accumulates in a closed, unventilated space faster than it can dissipate. Electric heaters, which do not burn fuel, eliminate this particular risk in principle — there is simply nowhere for carbon monoxide to come from — but this does not remove the other components of hookah smoke that are tied to the tobacco itself.
What did people use to light a hookah before hookah charcoal became a separate product?
Until the twentieth century there was no separate "hookah charcoal" commodity category — smoldering embers were taken from an ordinary household fire and stored in braziers (manqal/mangal).
What makes quick-light charcoal catch from a single lighter?
It's impregnated with a chemical accelerant, most often based on potassium nitrate (saltpeter), which provides the flare-up and sustained combustion without an open flame; such a briquette catches from a lighter in about 20 seconds.
When did one of the first coconut charcoals go on sale in the US?
According to retail sources, it was Coco Nara, which debuted in 2006.
What is an HMD, and when did the first device of this kind appear?
An HMD (heat management device) is a metal attachment that holds the charcoal above the bowl instead of foil; the Kaloud Lotus, introduced by Kaloud Inc. in 2012, is considered the first device in this category.
Where does most of the carbon monoxide in hookah smoke come from — the charcoal or the tobacco?
According to a study by the American University of Beirut, about 90% of the carbon monoxide in the mainstream smoke originates from the charcoal rather than from the tobacco blend.