Arab Baths of Ronda

Hammam of a Taifa-Era Kingdom Based in Ronda, in Southern al-Andalus

Ronda is in Andalusia, in southern Spain. The region's name comes from al-Andalus, the name for the part of the Iberian peninsula formerly ruled by Arabs and Berbers. That was all of it minus a strip along the Pyrenees mountains and the northwest coast, plus a strip of what today is the Mediterranean coast of southern Spain.

Neolithic people lived here. Then Indo-European people speaking what came to to be proto-Iberian arrived here in the fourth to third millennium BCE. They were finishing a long trek from, probably, the area north of the Black Sea. The Celts had a settlement at today's Ronda in the 6th century BCE, they called it Arunda.

Phoenician colonists settled nearby soon after, and then Greek colonists took over from the Phoenicians, slightly changing the name to Ρούντα or Runda.

The Carthaginians, famous for Hannibal and his elephants, dominated the Iberian peninsula at the end of the 3rd century BCE. Then the Romans took over.

The Roman Empire gradually crumbled, formally ceasing to exist in 476 CE. A group of Germanic tribes called the Suevi took control here, then the Byzantine Empire, and then the Visigoths.

Islam was founded in the Arabian peninsula in 610 CE, and rapidly spread from there. East to Baghdad and beyond, and west across North Africa. By 711, Muslim armies were taking control of most of the Iberian peninsula. Ronda surrendered in 713 and was renamed Izn-Rand Onda, or "The Castle City".

The city was in an excellent defensive location, a natural fortress on a stone outcropping on the south side of the twisting river now called Guadalevin. The river flowed through a 130-meter-deep gorge between the city and a similarly high area to its north.

The 711 invasion across the Strait of Gibraltar was the work of the Umayyad Caliphate, which had been founded in Damascus in 661. It set itself up as ruler of al-Andalus in Córdoba, and eventually its leader there proclaimed himself to be Caliph. That's analogous to a Christian announcing that he's the Roman Catholic Pope, all the Orthodox Patriarchs, and also boss of all the other Christians, combined.

That's a risky political move. Two Caliphs were assassinated in the Caliphal bath in Córdoba before that Caliphate collapsed in 1031. That started the first Taifa period in al-Andalus, where there wasn't unified rule by a Caliphate but instead a conglomeration of taifa or relatively small kingdoms.

Ronda, or Inz-Rand Onda at the time, became the capital of a small kingdom ruled by the Berber taifa Banu Ifran. That began the period when Ronda gained most of its Islamic heritage.

Ronda was conquered by the taifa of Seville, Abbad II al-Mu'tadid, in 1065. The Almoravid Empire, based in Marrakech, ruled the area in 1085–1145, there was a short taifa period in 1145–1147, and then the Almohad Caliphate was self-declared in Córdoba in 1147.

What you see of these baths today was mostly developed during Ronda's first taifa period of 1031–1065.

The map below shows the city at the height of its Islamic period. The original walled city had packed as much as practical within its original walled high fortress. A "suburb" formed along the southern and eastern perimeter, and a lower wall was built to enclose it.

The baths this page shows and describes were located just outside the eastern tip of the added suburb, where two streams join into one near the lower right corner.

The Google Map below shows the bath we're virtually visiting, labeled Baños Árabes Yacimiento Arqueológico, the twisting river gorge, and north of that, the new city of Rondo that was founded after the Christian Reconquista and expanded ever since.

Why the Baths?

Beyond simply wanting to be clean, of course, unlike the filthy medieval Europeans who might take one bath a year for Easter, but very likely not even that.

There is a religious requirement for cleanliness. Surah 5:6 of the Quran tells Muslims to wash before prayer, after using the toilet, or having contact with women:

O you who believe, when you rise up for prayer, wash your faces, and your hands up to the elbows, and wipe your heads, and (wash) your feet up to the ankles. And if you are under an obligation, then wash (yourselves). And if you are sick or on a journey, or one of you comes from the privy, or you have had contact with women and you cannot find water, betake yourselves to pure earth and wipe your faces and your hands therewith. Allah desires not to place a burden on you but He wishes to purify you, and that He may complete His favour on you, so that you may give thanks.

Routine pre-prayer washing or ablution of the hands, feet, and face is done at a mîdhâ, an ablutions facility, frequently in a walled courtyard attached to the entry side of the mosque. Or, built into a side wall of a mosque built within a limited space. Wuḍū or الوضوء is the specific procedure for cleaning your face and head, hands and arms to the elbows, and feet up to the ankles. Further Islamic regulations on toilet hygiene are codified in hādīth, sayings attributed to Muhammad.

Full-body ablutions, or ghusl or غسل are required in certain situations including Friday prayers and prayers for Islamic holidays. For that you need a full bath facility, like what we're seeing here.

But there's more. Baths were important venues for social interactions and political deals. There weren't golf courses or exclusive men's clubs with goofy rituals, and prayer time at the mosque was exclusively for that purpose. Social, political, and business interactions happened in the bath, especially in the Warm Room.

A few days before continuing south to Ronda, I had seen the Caliphal baths in Córdoba. They were custom-built for the Caliph, not just the ruler of Córdoba and its surroundings but, according to the Caliph, the leader of all the Muslims in the world. Those baths were for the powerful ruler and highly-placed government, business, and social figures.

These baths in Ronda were egalitarian, for everyone.

Arriving at the Baths Today

At the scale of the map shown above, I was staying near the train station. Google can show you a walking route to reach the baths. It will be usable, accurate in X and Y and utterly deranged in Z.

"Mostly flat", it says. Hah.

There are three bridges across the gorge. Only one, Puente Nuevo or the New Bridge carries a significant amount of vehicle traffic. It is 130 meters above the river, which descends further into the broad valley west of town. A different bridge had been built there in 1735, but it fell after just six years. The New Bridge is the newest of the three, built in a long project lasting from 1751 to 1793.

From the far end of the New Bridge as seen in the above picture, you can see Puente Viejo or the Old Bridge, which is older than the New Bridge, but it is not the oldest of the three.

I started down from the center of the new town toward the Old Bridge.

I continued down Calle Santa Cecilia to a water fountain. It was Fuente de los Ocho Caños, the Fountain of the Eight Spouts.

Three of the eight were putting out potable water when I passed.

A block further, I started walking across the Old Bridge. A few cars cross it, but many of the streets in Rondo limit driving to nearby residents with special permits.

From the Old Bridge, I could look up through the gorge to the New Bridge.

I could also look down to the oldest of the three bridges. The oldest one is known as the Roman Bridge because a bridge was built there by the Romans. The bridge you see today was built by on its ruins Berbers in the Muslim army, so it's confusingly also called the Arab Bridge. More confusingly, it was renamed Puente San Miguel, or the Bridge of Saint Michael, when the Christians conquered the town in 1485. And because this isn't confusing enough yet, it also shows up on maps as Puente de las Curtidurias or the Bridge of the Tanneries. "Arab Bridge" seems to be the most commonly used of its several names.

Looking ahead and to the left as I crossed the Arab Bridge, I could see my onward path branching off to the left and descending by a series of steps while the narrow road continued up to a switchback that passed through the city wall.

The stairs took me down to the bath. A display there showed me the overall plan.

1: Ticket office
2: Latrine
3: Vestibule or entry
4: Cold Room
5: Warm Room
6: Hot Room
7: Furnace and boiler
....
12: Cistern
13: Small pool from 19th–20th century
14: Pool from 19th century
....
16: Modern toilets

A second display showed the cross section.

From outside, I could see the arches that had supported the roof of the vestibule or reception hall, and the half-barrel vaults of the bath chambers, with round pieces of glass keeping most of the rain out of the facility.

Once I bought my ticket and entered, I had a better view of the vaulted roofs of the bath chambers.

At the far end, I could barely make out where the aqueduct brought water to the facility. I would have a much better view later.

Bayt al-Maslaj or the Reception Hall and the Latrine

There were separate operating hours and staff for men and women to use the bath. So, you stripped down as you entered and stored your clothes in the bayt al-maslaj or the Reception Hall. The arches you see reconstructed here supported a vaulted ceiling.

Ritual purification means getting clean outside and inside. So, right inside the doorway of the reception hall was a latrine in which to empty the contents of bladder and bowels. Below, we're looking into the latrine from the bottom of the staircase into the reception hall.

The actual latrine and its drain are in the far corner.

Then you got a large towel or loose robe and alcorques, cork-soled sandals to avoid slipping on the wet, smooth floor tiles and to avoid scalding your feet on the floor of the Hot Room. A pool in the center of the reception area would let you do a quick rinse of hands and feet before proceeding.

Then you were ready to enter the Cold Room.

Bayt al-Barid, the Cold Room

Bathers entered the Cold Room or Bayt al-Barid as they stepped in from the reception hall. It was a wide room left-to-right, with a pool at each end.

The water would be quite cool, piped in from the reservoir filled from the river with little to no heating.

The above two pictures show the fairly complete pool at the right end of the Cold Room as you step in. The first one below shows the other end — there was a second pool here, but what remains is far less complete.

Bathers would stop in the Cold Room for an initial rinse-down. They might also return for a cold soak after time spent in the Warm Room or the steam-filled Hot Room.

When the newly arrived bather had rinsed off in the Cold Room, it was time to step through the door for the Main Event in the Warm Room.

Bayt al-Wastany, the Warm Room

The Warm Room or Bayt al-Wastany was the most important stage of the baths in al-Andalus, as well as south in the Maghreb.

The Greeks and Romans immersed themselves in pools in their warm rooms and hot rooms. The Arabs and Berbers, however, would be in highly humid to steam-filled environments in their corresponding rooms.

Most of the cleaning happened in the Warm Room, with attendants scrubbing and massaging the bather.

In addition to the hygiene, the Warm Room was for socializing.

Today, speakers play soft music in the Warm Room, a nice touch.

Then, when you were completely clean inside and out, you could step through the door into the Hot Room.

Bayt al-Sajun, the Hot Room, and the Furnace and Boiler

The Hot Room or Bayt al-Sajun was very hot indeed. Water poured onto the floor quickly evaporated into the dense cloud of steam that filled the room. The furnace was directly adjacent, and hot gases from the furnace passed through the hypocaust, the chamber beneath the Hot Room floor, before venting up through chimneys within the wall between the Hot Room and the Warm Room.

Today, a nice ten-minute video plays in the Hot Room, first with Spanish narration and English subtitles, and then the other way around, over and over.

Not everyone immersed themselves in the pool in the Hot Room. It was very hot, and typically only used for immersion for theraputic reasons.

More commonly, bathers in the Hot Room would take a shower by opening a shoulder-to-head-high valve connected to the hot water reservoir

The barred archway lets you look into the infrastructure space where the furnace, the bronze boiler, and the water reservoir were located.

The light on the wall beyond the reservoir is coming in through the doorway where the wood supply was continuously replenished. We'll see it from the garden side in a moment.

You can look from the Hot Room, through the Warm Room and the Cold Room, to the reception hall. Bathers could move back and forth between the rooms, customizing their total bath experience.

The Garden

In addition to the hygiene and the social interactions, the baths also provided a soothing experience for the soul. A garden filled with fruit trees and aromatic plants was behind the bath, close to the river bank.

You can look up from the garden to the inner city wall and the lane leading down from the Roman / Berber / Arab Bridge.

In one corner of the garden, at a back corner of the baths, you can see where the wood supply for the furnace was continuously restored.

And, you can look down into the infrastructure area where the furnace, bronze boiler, and water reservoir were located, beyond the Hot Room.

The Noria and Aqueduct

A noria or ناعورة, meaning "growler" or "groaner", is a scoop wheel used to lift water into a small aqueduct. Its name comes from the noise that one tends to make. Its use in al-Andalus led to Spanish simply using the word noria, and then English borrowing that. A noria was built on a short tower at the back corner of the garden, at the river bank.

This one was operated by a donkey walking around it in a circle at the top of the tower.

To be pedantic (and what is a compendium of historic plumbing but pedantry), it's a sāqiyah or ساقية if it's powered by an animal rather than the water flowing through a stream. But it's described as the Spanish noria in Ronda.

When I visited Syria in 1996 and 1997, the city of Hamah was famous for its large norias. They were driven by the water flow through the river. I wonder if anything remains.

This noria in Ronda was a vertical wooden wheel with its axis level with the top of the slot in the tower. It carried a chain of ceramic pots or buckets which looped down into the pool of water opening into the river at the bottom.

The buckets were raised up to the wheel, where they dumped their water into a channel that led to the aqueduct running down the sloping top of the wall at one end of the garden.

Today's Aseos

The map outside the entrance showed that the aseos or restrooms (with toilet and sink) were in a area at the top corner of the site.

I thought that it was a little odd that there was a single toilet stall with no marking on the stall door that it's shared by everyone. Then I saw the sign inside the doorway, not visible from the outside, showing that I had blundered into the women's restroom.

In my defense, you can't easily see the sign until you get inside, and the map of the site showed just this one space marked "ASEOS".

Look, we've all done this.

I just happen to have photographic evidence of it.

The subtly labeled men's room is adjacent.