hristian Europe from the mirror of Islam.

Yet it is worth while to point out, as bearing on the
associations of the bath here emphasized, that even in Islam we
may trace the existence of a religious attitude unfavorable to
the bath. Before the time of Mohammed there were no public baths
in Arabia, and it was and is believed that baths are specially
haunted by the djinn--the evil spirits. Mohammed himself was at
first so prejudiced against public baths that he forbade both men
and women to enter them. Afterward, however, he permitted men to
use them provided they wore a cloth round the loins, and women
also when they could not conveniently bathe at home. Among the
Prophet's sayings is found the assertion: "Whatever woman enters
a bath the devil is with her," and "All the earth is given to me
as a place of prayer, and as pure, except the burial ground and
the bath." (See, e.g., E.W. Lane, _Arabian Society in the Middle
Ages_, 1883, pp. 179-183.) Although, therefore, the bath, or
_hammam_, on grounds of ritual ablution, hygiene, and enjoyment
speedily became universally popular in Islam among all classes
and both sexes, Mohammed himself may be said to have opposed it.

Among the discoveries which the Crusaders made and brought home with them
one of the most notable was that of the bath, which in its more elaborate
forms seems to have been absolutely forgotten in Europe, though Roman
baths might everywhere have been found underground. All authorities seem
to be agreed in finding here the origin of the revival of the public bath.
It is to Rome first, and later to Islam, the lineal inheritor of classic
culture, that we owe the cult of water and of physical purity. Even to-day
the Turkish bath, which is the most popular of elaborate methods of
bathing, recalls by its characteristics and its name the fact that it is a
Mohammedan survival of Roman life.

From the twelfth century onward baths have repeatedly been introduced from
the East, and reintroduced afresh in slightly modified forms, and have
flourished with varying degrees of success. In the thirteenth century they
were very common, especially in Paris, and though they were often used,
more especially in Germany, by both sexes in common, every effort was made
to keep them orderly and respectable. These efforts were, however, always
unsuccessful in the end. A bath always tended in the end to become a