Monument No. 562
Sultan al-Ashraf Abu al-Nasr Sayf al-Din Inal commissioned this bathhouse in 861 AH / 1456 AD, during the Mamluk Period. The structure was an important social institution. Like the architecture of Islamic bathhouses, the dog-leg corridor just beyond the entrance gives privacy and opens onto a cool room. Here, customers removed their clothes and prepared to bathe, where a number of seating areas and lockers for keeping personal belongings.
From here they went into the warm room, where they could rest and enjoy refreshments before entering the steamed basin room. They left the same way they came out, adjusting their body temperature with the changing atmosphere of each chamber.
The domes punctured with apertures of stained glass contributed to temperature regulation to circulate warm air and illuminate the building. The bathhouse got its water from a well through a waterwheel (saqiya), which raised this water to the furnace at the back of the building. Waste was burned in the furnace, which thus warmed the water in a large container that was then pumped to the different parts of the bath through pottery pipes and metal spouts.
