Hookah

An Eastern smoking pipe designed with a long tube passing through an urn of water that cools the smoke as it is drawn through. Tobacco smoking was not the original use of hookahs, as there are many examples of hookahs in both art and archeology prior to the arrival of tobacco in the Old World. In this period, the substance most commonly smoked in hookahs was hashish. After tobacco was imported from the Americas in the 1600s, hookah use became more widespread because of tobacco's milder effect. Opium, previously taken orally and mostly regarded as a medicine, was added to tobacco and smoked from the 1800s onwards. This mixture, called "madak", turned out to be more addictive than orally-ingested opium and created many social problems, especially in China. Although the practice of smoking opium and hashish in hookahs is not extinct, today hookahs are generally used for smoking tobacco, or cannabis.