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Public Bathing in the Islamic Context
One of the Islam’s five essential pillars is prayer. It is customary before praying for Muslims to perform ablutions, which require cleansing of the face, hands, and feet with water. In the most extreme of cases, cleansing with pure soil or sand is also permissible. Often, hammams will be located close to mosques and other places for prayer for those who wish to perform deeper cleansing.

Fears of sexual desires emerging from using the hammam
Islamic hammams, particularly in the Moroccan case, evolved from their Roman roots to adapt to the needs of ritual purification according to Islam. For example, in most Roman-style hammams, one finds a cold pool for full submergence of the body. This style of bathing is less preferable in the Islamic faith, which finds bathing under running water without being fully submerged more appropriate.

Al-Ghazali, a prominent, Muslim theologian writing in the 11th century, wrote Revival of the Religious Sciences, a multi-volume work on dissecting the proper forms of conduct for many aspects of Muslim life and death. One of the volumes, entitled The Mysteries of Purity, details the proper technique for performing ablutions before prayer, and great ablutions after physical activities deemed unclean, such as sex or defecation. For al-Ghazali, the hammam is a primarily male experience, and he cautions that women are only to enter the hammam after childbirth or illness. Even in these cases, al-Gazali finds it admissible for men to prohibit their wives or sisters from using the hammam. The major point of contention surrounding hammams in al-Ghazali’s estimation is nakedness. In his work he warns that overt nakedness is to be avoided, “… he should shield it from the sight of others and second, guard against the touch of others.”   He focuses extensively in his writing on the avoidance of touching the penis during bathing and after urination. He writes that nakedness is only decent when the area between the knees and the lower stomach of a man are hidden and for women, only the face and palms of hands are appropriate. According to al-Gazali, the prevalence of nakedness in the hammam could insight indecent thoughts or behaviors and therefore it is a controversial space. iii)	Ritual ablution is also required before or after sexual intercourse.  Knowing this, May Telmissany, a professor at the University of Canada, argues that the image of a hyper-sexualized woman leaving the hammam is an Orientalist perspective that sees leaving or attending the hammam as a sign of pre-eminent sexual behavior.

Morocco
Public baths in Morocco are embedded into a social-cultural history that has played a significant role in both urban and rural Moroccan cities. These public spaces for cleansing grew rapidly as Islamic cultures assimilated to the bathing techniques widely used during the Roman and Byzantine periods. The structure of Islamic hammams in the Arab world varies from that of what has been termed the traditional “Roman bath.” Additionally, since Morocco, unlike Egypt or Syria, was never under Ottoman rule, its baths are not technically Turkish, although several guide books might refer to them as such. This misnomer can be due in part to the Arabic use of the word hammam, which translates to “bathroom” or “public bath place” and can be used to refer to all variety of baths, including those in the Turkish and Roman design.

Architectural Attributes
Hammams in Morocco are often located in close proximity to mosques in order to facilitate the performance ablutions. Because of their private nature (overt nudity and gender separation), their entrances are often discreet and the building’s façade is typically windowless. Vestiges of Roman bathing styles can be seen in the manifestation of the three-room structure, which was wide-spread during the Roman/ Byzantine period. In Morocco, hammams are typically smaller than Roman/Byzantine baths. While it may be difficult to identify a hammam from the face of the structure, the hammam roof betrays itself with its series of characteristic domes that indicate different chambers within the building. Hammams often occupy irregularly shaped land plots as a way to fit them seamlessly into the city’s design. They are significant sights of culture and socialization as they are integrated into medina, or city, life in close proximity not only to mosques, but also to madrassas (schools), and aswaq (markets). Magda Sibley, an expert on Islamic public baths writes that second to mosques, many specialists in Islamic Architecture and Urbanism find the hammam to be the most significant building in Islamic medinas.

Moroccan Hammams as gendered spaces
Hammams are gendered spaces where being a woman or a man can make some one either included or “other,” therefore they represent a very special departure from the public sphere in which one is physically exposed amongst other women or men. This declaration of sexuality merely by being nude makes hammams a site of gendered expression. One exception to this gender segregation is the presence of young boys who often accompany their mothers until they grow old enough to necessitate attending the male hammam with their fathers. This separation from the women’s hammam and entrance to the male hammam usually occurs between ages 5 and 6. Valerie Staats finds that the women’s hammams of Morocco serve as a social space where both traditional and modern women from urban and rural areas of the country come together, regardless of their religiosity to bathe and socialize. It is clear that while al-Ghazali and other Islamic intellectuals may have stipulated certain regulations for bathing, those regulations, being outdated and fundamental, are not usually upheld in the every-day interactions of Moroccans in the hammam. Staats argues that hammams are places where women can feel more at ease than they feel in many other public interactions.