Imperial Ottoman Toilets
This is the toilet of the Padishah Emperor, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the ruler of all the Middle East, northern Africa, and south-east Europe. This is in the harem, the private quarters of the sultan, in Topkapı Palace in İstanbul, Turkey.
There's a board over the hole, but you can still appreciate the fine marble and Sultan-level craftsmanship.
Topkapı Palace was the official and primary residence of the Ottoman Sultans from 1465 through 1853. I have a page with much more about İstanbul, Turkey.
The man who would have been the last Ottoman Sultan moved to Manhattan after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. I have looked for his home, although I have no pictures of his toilet....
These toilets are representative of mid to late
Ottoman Empire design,
and show the Ottoman tendancy to include ornate design
details in the most utilitarian of objects.
These toilets are on exhibit at the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, in Bodrum, Turkey.
Also see the Crusader toilets for more toilets in Bodrum.
Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box. [....] Poor sanitation, bad hygiene, and unsafe water — usually unsafe because it has fecal particles in it — cause one in ten of the world's illnesses. [....] Diarrhea — nearly 90 percent of which is caused by fecally contaminated food or water — kills a child every fifteen seconds. The number of children who have died from diarrhea in the last decade [1998-2008] exceeds the total number of people killed by armed conflict since the Second World War.
In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.
The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet, by Julie Horan, contends that civilization began with the toilet.
Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Laura Noren and Harvey Molotch, has essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and architects on the importance of the toilet, especially for urban dwellers.
Latrinae Et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World describes the toilets of the Roman Empire from Iberia to Syria, and from North Africa to Hadrian's Wall in Britannia.
Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom, explains the history of personal cleanliness and hygiene to children in grades 5-8.
| A Sani-Flush blue border indicates a toilet that I've used. |
How long have my Toilets of the World pages been around? I'm not exactly sure, although they started in the mid 1990s as a single page on a Purdue University server. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you see what that looked like as far back as January 17, 1999.
My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001, although the Wayback Machine didn't notice its one enormous Toilet of the World page until January 17, 2002. Some time soon after that I split it into categories, and the collection has grown ever since.
In December, 2010 I registered the toilet-guru.com domain and moved the pages to a dedicated server.
If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):
