Alhambra
Baths of the mosque

One of the Alhambra Mosque's annexes, the baths (hammam), has been preserved on the east side of the church today and is accessible from the main street. Like other Islamic baths, it provided general hygiene to the local residents as well as the means to perform the ritual ablutions (ghusl) for religious purposes. Although sometimes eroticized in Romantic western literature, visitors attended the baths strictly with members of the same sex and wore cloths or towels around their private parts. These baths were constructed under Muhammad III along with the mosque. They may have been partly demolished in 1534 before being incorporated into a residential house during the 17th and 18th centuries. The preserved remains were significant enough to enable their restoration and reconstruction in 1934.

The layout of the baths had a typical sequence of rooms, including a changing room (bayt al-maslak͟h in Arabic), a cold room (bayt al-barid), and a hot room (bayt al-sak͟hun). Behind the hot room there would have been a boiler room where water was heated and firewood stored nearby. Original fragments of tile and stucco decoration, as well as part of the marble flooring, have been preserved in some of the rooms. The hot room has one small pool and another may have existed where a modern fountain stands today. However, unlike in Christian and earlier Greco-Roman culture, Muslims generally did not favour swimming or immersion in water for their visits to the baths. Private baths, of varying size and importance, were also built as part of the Alhambra's palaces.
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