Empress Dowager Cixi was particularly fond of shisha, so the late Qing court smoked shisha from top to bottom, while the former empresses of Daoguang smoked snuff.
The production of hookah pots will use a variety of materials, metal, glass, jade, marble hookah can also be counted as a type of jade, and the common alabaster in the Middle East world because it will be slightly soluble in water, so it is generally not used in the production of hookahs.
▲ [Print] Gold-plated white marble hookah
Circa 1800, 16.51 x 19.05 cm
Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The white marble shisha in the picture is from Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India, and this reliable bell-covered pot shape is more expressed in more shapeable metal, glass or ceramic.
▲ [Print] Copper inlaid silver shisha, circa 1750-1800
Made in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh or Bidar, Karnataka
16.5 x 15.88 cm
▲ Glass hookah, circa 1820, 23.5 x 20.5 cm
Collection of the Cooper Hewitt-Smithsonian National Design Museum, New York, USA
▲ [Iran] Bohemian style red glass shisha, 19th century
In fact, the appearance of ceramic pipes predates people's imagination, and a ceramic pipe has been excavated from the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh built in the 22nd-18th centuries BC, showing that the history of smoking apparatus of this material can be traced back to 4,000 years ago.
▲ [Iran] A ceramic shisha in the style of the Qajar dynasty
1897, 6 x 13 x 2.6 cm
Collection of Malik National Library and Museum, Tehran, Iran
The ceramic shisha in the picture above is painted with a portrait of the king of Qatar at that time, and this kind of shisha with celebrity portraits was once popular, becoming a sign that the people always have the fuehrer in mind and the correct political stance, and we can even find the corresponding video data in old photos today.
▲ An Iranian beauty who smokes shisha in 1900
Her bell-covered porcelain shisha is painted with portraits of political celebrities
The habit of smoking shisha spread from the Middle East to East Asia at the end of the Ming Dynasty, profoundly influencing the way Chinese smoked in modern times. The structural principle and suction method of Chinese shisha are generally consistent with the Middle East shisha, which is "storing water with copper pipes and sucking it through water". Chinese shisha in the Ming and Qing dynasties was mostly produced in the south, which was more compact and delicate than its foreign relatives, and it was convenient and hygienic.
▲ Hookah bags in late Qing China
What is good on the top will be worse for the bottom. It is said that Empress Dowager Cixi was particularly fond of shisha, so the late Qing court smoked shisha from top to bottom, while the former emperors of Daoguang smoked snuff.
▲ [Qing] Silver small hookah and small ruyi; small hookah width 2.5 cm, height 8 cm; small ruyi length 7 cm, width 2 cm
Collection of the Palace Museum
The rise of shisha in the court made the production of related objects more exquisite, and smoking utensils at that time were not only a display of craftsmanship, but also a symbol of status. The shisha bag of the late Qing Dynasty opened up a whole new field of luxury beyond the snuff bottle system. For example, the hookah preserved in the Palace Museum in Beijing in the picture below is composed of a set of mouthpieces, pipes, smoke buckets, brushes, tweezers, the cigarette bag barrel is embedded in the carved silver fire blue ball "Shou" word copper gilded decoration, the shisha material is silver, this court-style light luxury and folk hookah bags are mostly made of brass, white copper and tin and other metals.
▲ [Qingqianlong] silver roasted blue hookah, width 10.5 cm
Thickness 5 cm, pass height 25 cm. Qing Palace Old Collection.
Regarding the earliest origin of Chinese hookah, the general view is that it was introduced from Persia in the Middle Ages, and the Sui Dynasty became popular, but unfortunately no physical evidence has been found. However, there is a peculiar container that has been introduced to the Central Plains in the early Middle Ages that some Western views believe may be related to hookahs, so what is this container? Let's demystify it next time.