We entered the first room, which was moderately warm, vaulted, and paved with marble, and then passed on through a suite of rooms, each succeeding one becoming hotter and more clouded with steam, through the dense atmosphere of which might be seen strange unearthly objects. Some lay extended on their backs upon the floor, where wild- looking naked men with bald heads were pounding and kneading them; some stood up to their knees in a large circular basin of hot water; some were seated on their haunches, covered from head to foot with soapsuds, which were lathered over them with an implement like a horse’s tail; others were being drowned with hot water, which was poured over them in buckets; and others sat quietly smoking or sipping coffee on marble benches, unmoved by the puffing, ha-aing, washing, and scrubbing around them, while old men with grey beards, and young boys without any beards at all, all equally in a state of nudity, were poking about, appearing and then vanishing away again in the fog.
Charles Greenstreet Addison: Damascus and Palmyra
Bath al-Misk: Earliest Reference
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